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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27345112">If, When</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arya_Greenleaf/pseuds/Arya_Greenleaf'>Arya_Greenleaf</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Bill &amp; Ted (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>5 Times, 5+1 Things, Bisexual Character, Confusion, F/M, Feelings Realization, Fluff, Jealousy, Kissing, M/M, Masturbation, Pining, Polyamorous Character, Self-Discovery, Slow Build</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 01:01:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>23,249</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27345112</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arya_Greenleaf/pseuds/Arya_Greenleaf</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Ted "Theodore" Logan had no idea he was in love with his most excellent friend and one time everything finally made sense.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Elizabeth/Ted "Theodore" Logan, Joanna/Bill S. Preston Esq., Ted "Theodore" Logan &amp; Bill S. Preston Esq., Ted "Theodore" Logan/Bill S. Preston Esq.</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>54</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>No explicit content during Excellent Adventure timeline.</p><p>I wrote most of this during election week and the last two chapters sort of picking at them since then. It had been a hell of a week and I just wanted to write something fun and worry less about making sure everything was super perfect. I apologize that this isn't as immersive in the "language of B&amp;T" in the narrative as my other pieces, I hope you still enjoy it.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ted is sixteen the first time he notices how nice it is to look at Bill.</p><p>They’re at the mall, trying to rent suits for Spring Fling. Bill steps out of the dressing room in a jacket blue as the sky over the beach just after the sun goes down -- that is to say, very dark -- and a very crisp white shirt tucked into his jeans. </p><p>“The pants are too long,” Bill mumbles, his cheeks pink in a way Ted won’t tease him about because it’s too easy. He buttons the jacket and twists this way and that and levels a very serious look at Ted. “What if we just went like this? Jackets, I mean. Or does it look…” He turns back to the mirror and puts his chin up, looking down his nose at his reflection. He pushes his hair back with one hand and it springs softly back right where it had been over his forehead before. “Half-baked?”</p><p>Ted is preoccupied, trying to remember who made that giant sculpture. The one with his head too big that got sculpted by the old guy named after the Ninja Turtle. Bill looks like him, Ted thinks. The big-headed statue. Not the turtle.</p><p>There's just something nice about his face. Like it would fit into any of the paintings at the museum they had that field trip to in the fall and never look out of place.</p><p>“Ted! Are you listening, dude?”</p><p>“What? Yeah! No. I mean -- Yes, I’m listening. No, doesn’t look half-baked. Totally baked!”</p><p>Bill snorts and turns to look at himself over his shoulder. “Baked,” he smirks. “Do you think the babes will mind?”</p><p>“If we’re baked?”</p><p>“If we don’t do the suit thing.”</p><p>Ted looks down at himself, considering it. He kind of likes the way the pink pants look and the jacket makes his shoulders look square, but not <em>too</em> square. His dad probably won’t like it anyway and then he’ll be back here exchanging it for something boring.</p><p>“What about -- <em>hmm</em>…” Bill steps off the little platform in front of the mirror and makes a beeline for the other side of the store toward a rack full of colorful jackets. “What about this, dude?” He holds up a darker red jacket, a twin to the one he’s wearing.</p><p>“It would look great, dude.”</p><p>“For you, I mean.” Bill holds the jacket up in front of Ted, smacking him in the face with the hanger absentmindedly. “You could wear that shirt from the thrift store. Blue Oyster Cult.”</p><p>Ted takes the jacket out of Bill’s hands and stands in front of the mirror with it, trying to picture it in his head. “Bill, we don’t have dates,” he remembers. “Why does it matter what any babes think?”</p><p>“Well, there’s plenty just going together. Don’t you wanna dance with one or seven?”</p><p>“Of course, dude!” Bill stands next to him, grinning and excited in the mirror. “Do you think the DJ will play requests? They gotta put on <em>something</em> from <em>5150.</em>”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ted is seventeen when he notices how nice it is to listen to Bill.</p><p>They’re reading <em>Romeo and Juliet </em>in English class and Miss Franklin picks names out of a fishbowl on her desk to assign parts for everyone to read out loud. Bill smirks and someone in the back of the room whistles when his name is picked for Romeo. The girl who’s been picked for Juliet has Coke-bottle glasses that she yanks off her nose and starts cleaning on the bottom of her shirt like she wants to scrub the lenses away completely when Bill stands up at his desk. </p><p>Ted gets called for Tybalt and he’s pretty sure that him and Bill are supposed to be enemies and that just doesn’t feel right.</p><p>“Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I <em>never</em> saw true beauty till <em>this </em>night.” Bill holds his battered paperback up high enough to see without looking down, somewhere in the middle distance. His eyebrows are crinkled and he looks very serious with his hand resting against his chest.</p><p>“Tybalt?” Miss Franklin clears her throat and Ted looks around, wondering who she’s talking to. “Mr. Logan?”</p><p>“Yes, ma’am?”</p><p>“I believe the next line is yours.”</p><p>“Sorry, Miss Franklin.” Ted holds his book with both hands and squints at the text and wonders if maybe he might need glasses, too. “This, by his voice -- um -- should be a Montague. Fetch me my rapier, boy -- Miss Franklin, I’m not sure --”</p><p>“A sword, Ted.”</p><p>“Oh.” He clears his throat, embarrassed. “What dares the slave come hither, covered with an arctic -- with an <em>antic </em>face, to fleer -- To fleer?”</p><p>“To be rude and snicker.”</p><p>“To fleer and scorn at our sol-em-nity. Now, by the stock and honor of my kin, to strike him dead, I hold it not a sin.” Ted looks up at Bill and frowns. “Sorry, dude, that’s kinda bogus.”</p><p>“No sweat. It’s my own fault for crashing your party.”</p><p>Miss Franklin laughs softly and Ted continues, reading with another girl from the back of the class who has one line for every ten of his. He wishes they’d been called for opposite parts. She’s a lot more confident at this than he is, she’d make a better Tybalt. There’s a little breather Ted steals when everyone laughs when she calls him a <em>saucy boy</em> and Miss Franklin has to tell them all to settle down. <em>Finally</em>, Ted’s bit is over and Miss Franklin nods when he bends slightly like he’s going to sit. Bill’s voice is startling when he picks up his line after Ted’s <em>[Exit.]</em>.</p><p>“If I profane with my non-worthiest hand this triumphant shrine, the gentle sin is this,” Bill holds up two fingers and tips his chin upward. “My lips, two blushing pilgrims, are most ready to smooth that rough touch with a non-henious kiss.”</p><p>“Ad-libbing, are we, Mr. Preston?”</p><p>“Sorry, Miss Franklin.”</p><p>“No, please, continue. It’s wonderful.”</p><p>The girl reading for Juliet looks alarmed and she needs to be prompted to get started. “Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,” she holds her hand out to Bill from across the room and turns toward where he’s standing instead of facing the front. “Which mannerly devotion shows in this -- for saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.” She’s breathing a little heavy and Ted wonders if she’s alright.</p><p>“Don’t saints and regular dudes have lips, too?” As they read, their Juliet’s face gets pinker and pinker. Bill is crooning his lines like he’s Peter Criss. She lifts her hand to her forehead and pats at it with the back before she tries to cover it up by fluffing her hair at the top. “Thus from <em>my</em> lips, by <em>yours</em>, my sin is purged.”</p><p>“Then have my lips the sin that they have took!”</p><p>“Sin from thy lips? This is most <em>atypical</em>. Give me back that sin!”</p><p>Ted can barely hear the girl when she says, “You kiss by the Bill -- the book, you kiss by the <em>book</em>.”</p><p>Someone catcalls from the back and Miss Franklin frowns. “That was great, you both can sit.” She waits a moment for the murmuring to stop. The girl who was reading is staring down at her desk like she’s trying to light it on fire with her brain and Ted remembers very suddenly that her name is Carrie -- or something close to it that his brain is most insistent is Carrie -- and he’s just a bit worried at how focused she is on that desk. “Now, what the heck did we just read?”</p><p>When the bell rings for the change of class Bill waves at Ted and hangs back to talk to Juliet-Carrie. Ted hesitates near the door, other students bumping him from both directions. Bill has a big grin on his face and his hands are in his pockets. His ears are red like he’s sunburned and this girl has his total attention.</p><p>Ted waves to steal that attention back. They have math next and the teacher hates when people are late -- he makes them come up to the front of the room and do the harder examples on the board. It’s not <em>technically</em> punishment but everyone knows. Ted can’t handle that twice in one week. Bill turns his smile on ted and and waves back. He’ll catch up, he calls. Ted has no choice but to sprint down the hall and up the stairs. His butt lands in his seat <em>just</em> before the bell rings.</p><p>Bill never shows.</p><p>They don’t have any classes together for the rest of the day and it’s the most egregious form of torture that the universe could think to inflict upon Ted. Has he done something wrong? Did he insult Bill somehow? Did Bill get sick and spend math in the nurse’s office? Ted can’t loiter at school after the dismissal bell because his dad is waiting with the car to pick him up. Deacon is in some kind of debate or spelling bee or something and Ted is getting dragged to watch and Bill <em>knows</em> this but he still doesn’t appear at the bell and Ted has no choice but to leave.</p><p>When they get home late that evening, full of pizza and ice cream in celebration of Deacon’s success -- did he succeed? Ted’s really not sure at that point. He’s just glad he got to partake -- the answering machine light is on and Ted’s dad hits the play button as they all get inside and shed shoes and jackets and backpacks.</p><p>Ted freezes in the living room when he hears Bill’s voice. It’s a relief to hear him as much as it launches twelve thousand new questions in his head.</p><p>“Dude! Just wanted to know if there was any math homework and, ah, good luck Deek? Catch you later, Ted!”</p><p>The tape clicks off and Ted’s dad turns to him with an eyebrow lost in his receding hairline. “Is there something going on between the two of you?”</p><p>Ted considers it for a moment and shrugs. “I don’t know.”</p><p>“Well, not such a huge loss.” He glances at his watch and then looks back at Ted. “There’s time to get started on homework tonight. Table’s already clear.”</p><p>“Yes, sir.” Ted finishes taking his jacket off and drags his backpack across the living room floor and into the dining room. The tins of pudding floating in the bottom <em>clang</em> against each other and the tabletop when he chucks it up there and he cringes, waiting for his dad to say something. No reproach gets offered, not even later when he comes through to make coffee in the kitchen in his robe and slippers, ready to settle in to watch <em>20/20</em>. Half of the program is over when Ted finishes his homework, or decides he’s finished, and trudges up the stairs to his room. Ted flops onto the bed and stares at the ceiling, swinging his legs back and forth and listening to the soles of his sneakers scrape against the carpet. </p><p>He feels strange and he doesn’t like it one single bit. Maybe, he thinks, he's getting sick. That's the only reasonable explanation he can think of for Bill missing class and they spend so much time together so Ted must have caught it, too.</p><p>Ted is up early the next morning sitting on the back porch with his guitar. It’s not plugged in or anything so it doesn’t make much sound when he picks at the strings in random patterns. He should go to the music store at the mall, he thinks. There’s a guy there that gives lessons. Or he could get one of those beginner books and try to follow along with that. If he has to be a solo act it’s probably a lot more important that he can actually play something.</p><p>“Ted?” He thinks it’s just Deacon, looking for someone to lend him money for the arcade like he does every Saturday. He ignores it, determined to figure out which string he has to pluck to make it sound like he knows what he’s doing. “<em>Tedtheodoreloh-gan!”</em></p><p>The familiarity of it pings around in his chest like a pinball, lighting everything up and hitting his ribs like bumpers.</p><p>Ted gets up and leans out over the side of the porch to see Bill peeking over the top of the fence. His eyes just clear it and he looks like his face might be turning red from the effort of holding onto the top of the fence and holding himself up. He disappears and there’s a soft <em>thump</em> when his feet hit the ground.</p><p>“Are you gonna leave me hangin’ out here or open the gate, dude?”</p><p>Ted sits on the railing and swings his legs over. He drops to the ground a little clumsily and stumbles toward the fence to open the gate. Bill bounds through with a grin, rocking on his heels and looking like he wants to tell Ted something most urgently. They traipse up onto the porch and Ted slouches back down onto the wicker couch with his guitar. Bill perches on the railing and swings his backpack off his shoulder to dig through it.</p><p>“Look!” he says, his eyes bright. He brandishes a pair of drumsticks and lets his backpack fall onto the floor while he drums against the rail. “I found them at the thrift store. Now all we need is drums.”</p><p>“When did you go?”</p><p>“Last night. There wasn’t much to do since you were out so I went over to the Circle K for noodles and then there. I got this rad shirt too but it kinda smells like mothballs so I can’t wear it until after I wash it.”</p><p>“Oh, cool.” Ted plucks at the strings aimlessly, trying to seem unaffected.</p><p>“Hey, you never called me last night. Was there math homework?”</p><p>“Yeah. The even-number questions from the chapter assessment.”</p><p>“<em>Ugh</em>.” He stops drumming when he looks up, something in the kitchen window catching his attention. “Sorry I never showed, dude.”</p><p>“Were you sick?”</p><p>“Huh? No, of course not.”</p><p>“Well, I don’t know why else you wouldn’t come.”</p><p>Bill grins again. “You know that girl from class? The one who was reading with me.”</p><p>“Carrie,” Ted mumbles.</p><p>“Yeah, Caroline. She seemed most uptight at the end of the scene and I thought maybe it was because I kept changing the words so I wanted to apologize, you know? And when I went over to her I saw she had this <em>sweet</em> Crüe button on her vest and we started talking.”</p><p>“What does that have to do with math?”</p><p>“Well…” Bill’s mouth can’t settle on what expression it wants to be making and finally decides on a cat-ate-the-canary smile. “We skipped class.” Ted can’t hide his own shock. School isn’t their favorite place but skipping class is just dumb. “Went out to the football field and sat under the bleachers.”</p><p>“Bill!”</p><p>Bill laughs, genuinely entertained. “Aw, man I didn’t even get to lay one on her, honestly. We shared a cigarette and she told me about how her sister snuck her into the Crüe show out in Sacremento -- that was where the button was from. And then she said she liked how I read Romeo and asked if I was gonna try out for drama.”</p><p>Ted snickers. “Lame.” </p><p>Bill frowns. “I didn’t think so.” He shrugs and tries to spin one of the drumsticks. He fails and it flies toward Ted, hitting the seat beside him. “They’re doing… <em>Hammit? Hamlet</em>. There’s ghosts and sword fights and everyone dies at the end. I think it’s the one where the guy talks to the skull, Yahoo.”</p><p>“Sword Fights, huh?”</p><p>“Yeah, lots of ‘em.”</p><p>Ted sets his guitar aside and picks up the drumstick. He springs up out of his seat and brandishes the drumstick in his best impression of a sword. “Then -- un-gard, you heinous Montana!”</p><p>Bill catches himself, nearly falling backward off of the railing. He laughs and swings his legs over so that he can jump down. When he hits the ground he holds up the drumstick he managed to hang onto. “Come down and fight like a <em>man</em>, Tybalt!”</p><p>Ted jumps over the couple of stairs to the ground and tries to look tough with his drumstick thrust forward. He beckons Bill forward with the other hand and waggles his eyebrows. “Romeo, I am afraid, my dude, must die.”</p><p>The drumsticks <em>thwap</em> together as they fight. Ted yelps when Bill lands a particularly wicked slap against the side of his thigh as they dodge around each other. It’s not purposeful so he forgives it, but he does abandon his stick and tackle Bill. He doesn’t want to get slapped again and the quickest way to beat Bill in any fight get him off his feet.</p><p>Bill screeches. The sound of it is like a kid on the teacups at Disney. He grunts when he hits the ground and all the air gets knocked out of him and he laughs and wheezes while his chest fills up again. “You’ve defeated me, Tybalt -- the Capulets can keep their babe.” He coughs and Ted gets off of him, flopping onto the lawn beside him. It’s kind of damp and Ted cringes. “I’m not supposed to die until the last act. I think Shakes-pear is gonna be annoyed.”</p><p>“Isn’t he dead?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“Well, then he can’t say anything. Transformative work, dude.”</p><p>“Totally.”</p><p>They lay there in the damp grass staring up at the sky for a long moment. Bill is tapping out a rhythm very gently against his forehead with his drum-sword-stick and his foot is wiggling like he's using it as a rudder to power his brain.</p><p>“Hey, Ted, you’ll never believe what Caroline told me.”</p><p>“I don’t know man, what did she say?” Ted doesn’t <em>want</em> to know. He doesn’t like the idea of this chick and how she’s led Bill astray.</p><p>“You know Ashley Jones?” Everyone knows Ashley, Ted assures him. She’s the ultimate high school cliché: head cheerleader. Popular, blonde, and mean. Unfortunately, also a total babe so it's hard to write her off. “And you remember Missy, right? I mean how could anyone forget Missy.” Ted does, and he wishes Bill would get to the point. He thinks there might be an ant in his hair. “Well, Missy’s dating her older brother and Ashely is <em>pissed</em>.”</p><p>Ted shrugs. “Who cares, dude? College people are weird.”</p><p>“Ashley and Missy used to be good pals, I think. Ashley was like, her protégé or whatever.”</p><p>“At least it’s her brother and not her dad or something.”</p><p>Bill snorts and laughs. “That would be terrible, dude. Can you imagine? That would look so weird. A wicked babe and an old dude.”</p><p>“Super weird, dude.”</p><p>Bill sits up abruptly and there’s a dark spot on his back from the ground. “You wanna go down to Bonelli today? We could go swimming -- one last time before the lake gets too cold. I can probably get my dad to drive us.”</p><p>“Yeah!”</p><p>“<em>Sweet</em>. Meet at my house in like an hour?”</p><p>Ted nods in agreement and they help each other off the ground. It’ll be a nice day, he thinks, as long as he doesn’t have to listen to more about that girl from English class.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ted is on the cusp of losing everything when he realizes that he might not be the only one with something to lose.</p><p>By some impossible miracle of magic or science -- or honestly, maybe Ted had been hit by lightning and he was having some kind of strange coma dream or something -- he and Bill are walking around a castle in England in the fifteenth century. They’re dressed in a pair of suits of armor that didn’t seem like they’d be so heavy when they were just hanging in storage, but now Ted thinks that maybe he should have been running around the school track on the weekends with Bill.</p><p>The castle is a lot more confusing to navigate than Ted thought it would be from the outside. It seemed straight forward: Door, stairs, room, door stairs… and then they’d be in the general area that they’d seen those <em>most</em> bodacious babes standing on the balcony. It could just be that they’re going around in circles because they can’t see much out of the helmets. Ted is surprised there were any knights at all because if he were in some kind of battle wearing this junk he’d probably be dead.</p><p>They stumble into a room Ted is sure they haven’t been in before, tripping over each other and bumping into the door. Somebody left all their armor and their sword just sitting out where anyone could take it. In the back of the most lizardy, basic parts of Ted’s brain he thinks that his dad would have read whoever it was the riot act about weapons safety and for once -- in the most lizardy, basic parts of Ted’s brain -- he doesn’t think his dad would be so totally unreasonable there. He picks the sword up anyway, it’s just too tempting and he’s got all this armor on.</p><p>“Hey, Bill!” he says. “I’m Darth Ted!” He doesn’t mean to bonk Bill on the head with the sword but he does, and then it’s on.</p><p>“Well, I’m Luke Bill! You’re not my father!”</p><p>It’s hard to control the swords. They’re just as heavy as the armor and it feels like the sword is swinging Ted instead of the other way around. The two of the stumble around smacking each other and making the armor clang under the blades and then suddenly Ted’s feet aren’t on the floor.</p><p>Ted tumbles down a curving set of stairs and he can’t stop himself. He’s too heavy and he’s falling too fast and he’s sure that his science teacher would have something to say -- gravity and velocity and <em>something</em>, but Ted’s head is spinning too much to think about it. Just as suddenly as he started falling, he hits the floor <em>hard</em>. The rattling of the armor around his head is discombobulating and he wonders if this is kind of what a pistachio feels like -- the chest piece and the metal shells around his legs just <em>pop off</em> with the impact. </p><p>Dizzy, Ted sits up and pushes the armor away, yanking his body out of the buckles that are still holding on and pulling the helmet off of his head. He can barely hear it over the ringing in his head, but he thinks there might be someone on the stairs and maybe it’s just an echo but there could be someone rushing in from the other side of the room. Ted crawls away from the armor and wobbles to his feet. He crashes into the wall before he finds a door. Just as he decides that what he hears really is some medieval dude coming into the room, Ted ducks behind a stack of crates filled with potatoes.</p><p>There’s the loud sound of metal-on-metal and someone shouts to search the castle. Ted tries to make himself as small as possible. He squeezes his eyes shut and holds his breath, begging the universe to let him be invisible.</p><p><em>Oh no,</em> he thinks<em>, what about Bill?</em></p><p>Bill is still somewhere up those awful, steep, twisty stairs -- he hopes Bill didn’t try to follow him down. They might <em>both</em> be done for.</p><p>Someone clatters into the room and shouts and a bunch of old ladies bustle through the space Ted is hiding in. The crates of potatoes tip toward him and he puts his arms up to cover his head and --</p><p>“<em>Bogus</em>,” Bill groans in the other room. Ted is afraid to call out to him for fear of bringing all those weird castle people back down to drag them both away to the dungeon. He struggles behind the crates, lamenting his awkward position all scrunched into the corner. “Heinous!” Bill proclaims. “Most non-triumphant,” he says -- quieter, softer.</p><p>Bill sounds <em>genuinely</em> sad.</p><p>Ted’s chest clenches and his stomach feels weird. He doesn’t know what’s going on and he just wants to get out from under these cursed spuds.</p><p>“Ah, Ted, don’t be <em>dead</em>, dude!” Bill’s voice is scratchy like it was when his dad gave him some old letter from his mom. He never let Ted read it, he just held it half crumpled in his hands while he explained what it was in that same non-glorious tone.</p><p>Ted is just about to shout out <em>I’m not dead, dude!</em> when someone comes rushing through. Ted freeze, covering his own mouth while they pass.</p><p>“You killed Ted, you medieval dickweed!” </p><p>The scuffle that Ted hears is loud and dramatic. Armor clangs and things get knocked over. He’s <em>got</em> to get out from under these terrible tubers and help Bill. </p><p>Ted twists and pushes and the crates topple and the potatoes rain down on top of him and there’s a crash from the other room and he just <em>knows</em> that something absolutely most non-non-egregious is about to happen, he feels it in his <em>gut</em>.</p><p>Ted jumps out of the pile of junk as quickly as he can and there’s some dickweed standing over Bill and he’s got the nerve to be pointing a sword right at his face and <em>Bill</em> --</p><p>Bill looks so afraid and so small with his armor practically up around his ears.</p><p>Ted’s mind races and he spots what looks like a massive turkey leg from the Renaissance Faire. A mutant turkey, clearly because it is most unbelievable. He picks it up without a second thought and swings it over his head, leaping across a pile of pots and pans knocked onto the floor. He smashes the medieval dude right across the head with it and he falls to the floor.</p><p>Shocked, Ted tosses the leg away and looks down at Bill. A triumphant wave crashes around inside his chest and he throws his arms into the air in celebration. Ted wishes he had a camera to capture the astonished look on Bill’s face as Ted helps him up off the floor.</p><p>“Whoah! Ted! You’re alive!”</p><p>“Yeah! I fell out of my suit when I hit the floor!” </p><p>Everything feels even more unreal that it already did. Travelling through time in a phone booth, fighting and hiding in a castle kitchen, So-crates and Billy the Kid waiting for them somewhere on the other side of the moat -- and Bill’s face bright as a beam of sunshine around red, watery eyes.</p><p>They both lurch forward to hug each other and Ted feels about a million degrees hot inside and he feels so <em>afraid</em> and it doesn’t make sense. He’s fine, Bill is fine. It’s like his feelings are catching up with him in a weird relay race.</p><p>If the whole hootenanny in the kitchen happened in slow motion, everything that happens after is in fast motion.</p><p>They find the princesses and it is <em>magnificent</em>. Ted’s so glad that his future self told him he should say hello because they are truly the most remarkable babes and they need <em>help</em> and who really is there better to help them then Bill and himself? Ted wishes there was more time to get to know them before the ugly royal dudes ruined everything -- but on the other hand, he’s pretty sure Mr. The Kid would have charmed them and then what would the point be anyway?</p><p>They spend a very brief moment tied up in a pair of cells. Ted can hear a crowd starting to gather outside and think maybe the princesses might be able to convince their dad somehow to let them go. They can come back for the princesses after their report is over then -- they’ll just come back and wait. They know they’re way around the castle now and they can hide out in the little living room the princesses took them through before they got found out in that massive bedroom. They could hide behind the curtains and no one would be the wiser and then after their current-past selves get taken away they could un-hide themselves and get the princesses to safety in San Dimas.</p><p>Bill has been very quiet, not even offering any kind of ideas for the plan. “Hey, Bill? Are you there, dude?”</p><p>“Yeah, dude.”</p><p>“Are you okay?”</p><p>“I’m… no, not really, my friend.” Ted hears him sniff really hard and wishes he could offer him the napkin from <em>Pretzels and Cheese</em> he’s sure is in his pocket.</p><p>“Can I do something to help?”</p><p>Bill laughs and the sound of it is weird and wet. “I don’t wanna die, Ted. I’ll miss you too much. And my dad -- he’s really not so bad, you know? And he’ll never know what happened. He's gonna think I ran away or something dumb like that. He's gonna think I'm mad at him and I left. We fought so much last week, Ted. We fought <em>so much</em>.”</p><p>“We’re not gonna die, Bill. I can feel it. The princesses are gonna come through for us -- you’ll see! And then your dad never has to know about any of this because you'll be home.”</p><p>“Ted, I didn’t get the impression that very many people listen to them around here.”</p><p>“Well, then… Then we’ll escape! We always figure something out.”</p><p>Bill sniffs again. “My excellent colleague,” he sounds more optimistic this time. “You are most correct.”</p><p>Ted almost believes him and the panic that’s been worming its way into his guts quiets down just a little bit.</p><p>When they <em>do</em> escape it’s exhilarating. There’s So-crates and Billy and they free the pair of them and then there’s the chase in the wagon and then they wind up in prehistoric times and Bill takes it upon himself to try to fix the booth because they don’t know how to call anyone for help and they can’t make it go anywhere.</p><p>Ted gives all of their historical dudes -- and one historical warrior babe -- a snack to keep them occupied and he’s a little worried that all of his emergency puddings are gone then. What if they never get out of here? What will they eat? Ted tries to focus on that problem and not the way Bill’s face is scrunched up like he’s going to explode. It feels safer than thinking about the strange, non-chuffed sides of Bill he doesn’t know.</p><p>It feels safer than thinking about how badly he wants to make all the things that make Bill unhappy go away.</p><p>How he wants to climb up on top of the booth with Bill and hug him until his face doesn't look like that anymore.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Look I know it's way too early in the timeline for this Metallica joke but I had it in my head that the album had come out in '90. Just suspend disbelief. If I understand correctly they retconned the shit out of the chronology in Face the Music anyway! Time is an illusion all too conveniently measured by the decay of Cesium 133.</p><p>Limited canon-typical usage of "fag."</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ted feels like he’s out of control, totally flailing in the murky waters of adultness when he realizes that maybe, for him, it’s not just babes. Maybe, it's also babely dudes. But that’s not really possible, is it?</p><p>It’s probably just all of the waves crashing around his ears, confusing him in every way possible.</p><p>They probably wouldn't be so loud if his dad hadn't pushed him into cutting his hair so short. He'd have a little insulation or something. A shield to ward it off.</p><p>It’s the stress of moving out on his own, leaving the house he grew up in behind. Leaving Deacon behind, even if they don’t get along. Leaving his dad, even if they don’t get along. Ted is totally excited for the excellent adventure ahead -- but also pretty scared, if he really thinks about it.</p><p>At first, Ted stares down the concept of living on his own with much trepidation. He’d well and truly be <em>alone</em>, although he supposes that he’ll have Elizabeth over pretty often -- and Bill, too, of course there would be hanging out with Bill as much as he wants without his dad butting into it <em>and</em> that would mean they could work a lot more on the band -- but the apartment would be just… him. </p><p>Just Ted. </p><p>The name on the mailbox would just be “T. Logan” and not “The Logans” and not even “Elizabeth and Theodore” because he hasn’t worked up the nerve to just <em>ask her</em> the most simple question ever.</p><p>He hates it but he thinks that maybe if he survives and doesn’t set the place on fire or anything -- pays his rent on time, all of that -- that it might truly change the way his dad sees him. It’ll stop being how his dad straightens him out and make him grow up since Alaska got cancelled and be more like maybe they’re pals.</p><p>And then one day, right before he’s supposed to officially move out, sitting on the beach at the edge of the lake with the princesses and watching the sun go down over the tree line, Bill has a brilliant idea.</p><p>“Ted,” he says. “We could move in together.”</p><p>“I already have the lease and stuff, Bill, I can’t really go elsewhere.”</p><p>“I could move in with you! I gotta get out of my house anyway. Things are weird between Missy and Dad. Weird<em>er</em>. She’s got her friends over all time time. It’s like having a really annoying older sister.”</p><p>“I only have one bedroom, though, dude.”</p><p>“Well, we could get a pull-out couch or a futon.... Or bunk beds, dude!”</p><p>Joanna pauses in her progress through braiding a most complicated looking crown into Elizabeth’s hair to laugh. “That sounds incredibly conducive to amorous conquest, doesn’t it?” Bess snorts and bright red Kool Aid sprays across the sand in front of her. Bill stretches his leg out to nudge Jo playfully with his toes and tell her she’s a tease.</p><p>“Either way I don’t think it would work, my friend. My dad had to co-sign the lease and stuff. I don’t know if we could add you on there.” Ted cocks his head to the side and thinks hard for a moment. “Do they even make grown up sized bunk beds, dude?”</p><p>“I’m sure they got ‘em at Oats Military Academy,” Bill turns slowly, a sly grin on his face.</p><p>“Shut up, Bill.” It stings, but Ted can't help but laugh.</p><p>Captain Logan was <em>not</em> initially into the idea of Bill living with Ted. They’d just slack off and the place would be a mess. They’d forget to pay their bills. They’d let things get run down. Ted will never be sure what made him change his mind, whether they wore him down just enough or what, but by some miracle he concedes and the brand new copy of the lease with Bill’s name on it in real, honest to goodness ink feels like holding a whole bar of gold.</p><p>Ted’s dad helps them with the money stuff, the security and the first and last month’s rent. But, he tells them they’re on their own for furniture. And that’s really just fine, Ted thinks. He’d probably push them toward boxy, boring things when what Ted really dreams of is a big, overstuffed couch he can sprawl out on. So the very first night, Bill and Ted lay on the living room floor in a couple of sleeping bags and laugh and laugh at how everything echoes in the totally bare room.</p><p>They’re both between jobs so they have at least a few days to haul all of their stuff over from home and fill the place up. They had spent the whole day scrubbing the bathroom and the kitchen and dusting everywhere else and then they’d rented one of those crazy steam cleaning things from the hardware store to do the carpets. They hadn’t really seen the point but Jo and Bess had been kind of insistent. Bill and Ted had to admit that it looked much nicer all shiny and new looking and it smelled a lot better. The girls had even come over and stocked up their fridge and filled a whole cabinet with macaroni and cheese.</p><p>The windows are open to air everything out and even though it’s the summer it’s still kind of chilly so Ted scoots himself closer to Bill and only succeeds in twisting his sleeping bag around himself.</p><p>“Hey, Ted?”</p><p>“Yeah, Bill?”</p><p>“I’m not so sure we planned this out as carefully as we thought.”</p><p>When they start laughing it’s hard to stop and Ted is curled over on his side gasping for breath in no time. “Do you think we could fit all my stuff from my room into the van in one go?”</p><p>“I don’t think so, dude.”</p><p>“What if we used the van <em>and</em> I asked Bess if we could maybe load some small boxes up in the girls’ car?”</p><p>“I think we should just rent a U-Haul, my friend.”</p><p>“But I don’t have a license, dude, we can’t have three things to drive.”</p><p>“No, man, just load everything into the U-Haul. We can start at your house and then if Missy doesn’t have her weirdo friends over again and we’re not too bushed we can stop at mine -- bring everything over in one trip. I can drive!”</p><p>“Bill?”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“You are most wise, do you know that?”</p><p>“Nah, I just got more room to think. Your brain’s all full with everything else.” Bill turns so his back is to Ted and pulls the sleeping bag higher over his shoulder. “We should try to get some sleep -- night, Ted.”</p><p>“Night, Bill.”</p><p>Ted wakes early the next morning with an elbow jabbing his side and the worst stiff neck he’s ever experienced. He and Bill go through the trash bag of clothes they each brought with them to find something clean and sit cross-legged on the floor again with a box of cereal and the gallon of milk between them. Ted has never particularly liked coffee, what his dad always made was a lot more like caffeinated sludge anyway, but he thinks he could use some this morning. He feels a little like he’s been hit by a truck or several and he doesn’t know how he’s going to make it through the day.</p><p>“Hey, Ted? I had a thought.”</p><p>Ted snorts into his cereal. “That’s dangerous.” It earns him a smack on the knee with Bill’s spoon and it’s well worth it.</p><p>“Maybe while you work on packing up your room, I should get as much of the band’s stuff into the van as I can. Me and the girls can bring it over to their place and then you won’t have anybody up your butt while you work. And then when you're ready we can all help you get your stuff into the U-Haul.”</p><p>Later, Bess will tell him that Bill was worried Ted’s dad would have already started getting rid of their stuff and how were they supposed to write the song that would unite the whole world if all their instruments got sold before they even really knew how to play them?</p><p>Bill and the girls make pretty quick work of the band’s stuff. Three heads are better than one, he guesses. Ted finds himself feeling weirdly frozen, not really moving things into boxes with the speed he thinks he should be. He starts to try putting his clothes into an old suitcase but nothing is really folded neatly to start with and it just frustrates the hell out of him that it won’t fit so he resorts to just dumping it into garbage bags like he had yesterday and he doesn’t have that many clothes anyway, at least not as many as Bess has, so it’s really not such a huge deal. All of his records are already in egg crates so it’s not so hard to get them into the truck. But the rest of it, all of the odds and ends of… of his <em>life</em> are a little harder.</p><p>Ted is sitting on the edge of his bed feeling like he’s made a horrible mistake, surrounded by half-filled boxes and piles of stuff he didn’t even know he still had, when Bill and Elizabeth and Joanna poke their heads into the room.</p><p>“Dude, you alright?”</p><p>“Darling?”</p><p>“Theodore?”</p><p>Their chorus of concern only makes him feel worse in a way that he doesn’t know how to name. Bill comes over and bounces down on the mattress beside him and tries to catch his eye. “Ted?”</p><p>Bess sits down on the other side of him  and turns his face toward hers for a chaste little kiss. “This is all quite a lot more than you anticipated, isn’t it?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Ted warbles, really trying his best not to fall apart. Bess pulls him down into a hug and he lets go of a sigh so heavy he thinks the Earth moves.</p><p>“Would it help to know that <em>we</em> know how you must be feeling? Jo and I?”</p><p>“Oh man,” Ted pulls away, embarrassed. “I’m so <em>dumb</em>.” Bill scoffs, offended for him at the notion. “Dude, they left their whole lives behind in a whole other century. I’m just moving across town.”</p><p>Joanna shakes her head and sits beside Bill and Ted isn’t sure his twin frame is really meant to hold up four whole people. “It’s not a misery Olympics, Ted,” she says. “You’re just not alone in feeling, <em>mm</em> -- a lot.”</p><p>Bill drops his head onto Ted’s shoulder and the simple act of it is more reassuring than anything else could possibly have been. Ted laughs huffily and teases him. “Fag, get off me!”</p><p>Bill responds by wrapping his arms around Ted and throwing a leg over his lap. Elizabeth laughs and does the same. Joanna’s white Ked thunks against his knee and her fingertips grab at the back of his shirt. Tangled up in the most awkward group hug, Bill snorts and says, “Just imagine how awesome it’s gonna be when you don’t have to ever forfeit the television to Deacon again.”</p><p>Four heads are even <em>better</em> than three and together they plow through boxing up everything in Ted’s bedroom and bring it all out to the truck. While Ted and Bill struggle with the dresser and the desk, the girls take all of the posters and photos down off of the walls most carefully. Hours later, when the sun has gone down and they’re burning the last minutes until Captain Logan’s double shift ends, Bill and Ted slide his mattress into the back of the van and slam the doors shut with a sense of finality.</p><p>Bess and Jo wave before they hop up into the van and take off in the direction of the new apartment building. Bill and Ted slide into the cockpit of the U-Haul and Bill grins while he turns the radio up.</p><p>“You sure you can drive this thing, dude?”</p><p>“I guess we’ll see!”</p><p>They make it to the apartment in one piece.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>What Ted wouldn’t give for an elevator! Up and down and <em>up and down</em> those heinous stairs again and again. Ted feels like his arms are going to fall right off by the time they’re done bringing the last box of Bill’s stuff into the apartment. </p><p>Elizabeth and Joanna have bestowed upon them the most radical gift of the squishiest, deepest couch that Ted has ever seen and everything gets a little crazy when the delivery guys show up with it. </p><p>Bess and Jo have gone out to get dinner and the couch guys finally leave. They had to take the door off its hinges and Ted was terrified that they wouldn’t be able to get it back on and they’d lose their security and his dad would be <em>so mad</em>. Bess had wanted Ted to come with her to pick up the food, to get him away from the apartment for a bit but the thought of not knowing what was happening was much too stressful, he needed to watch. </p><p>It was a relief when the delivery dudes finally left and even though there is still plenty of unpacking to do, Bill and Ted decide that a break is best.</p><p>Bill hoists himself up onto the wall and swings his legs over the side so they dangle over the pavement below. It makes Ted’s heart race and he wishes Bill wouldn’t so he sticks close to his side just in case. Bill fishes the crumpled, mostly empty cigarette packet from the pocket of his button front. It takes a moment for the end to catch, the summer breeze stronger up here on the second story where there’s less to block it. He jerks his head toward the opposite side as the first tendrils of smoke float away and Ted moves away from the flow of it.</p><p>“Did you ever think, when we were like twelve and getting detention for passing notes in class and stuff, that we’d be here?” Ted asks the question but it’s not necessarily in expectation of an answer. It’s a thought for the void or the Circuits of Time or something.</p><p>“That we’d travel through time and space and start dating some five hundred year old babes? Or that we’d wind up in a hole in the wall together?”</p><p>Ted laughs at the deadpan way Bill says it, like it’s both absurd and non-absurd at the same time. “I honestly don’t know, dude. All of it? None of it?”</p><p>Bill doesn’t answer. He takes a long drag on the cigarette and gets very still before he finally breathes it all out very slowly. “You know, just because your dad helped us out -- it doesn’t mean he’s a good guy now.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“It’s just him still… still controlling you, just from farther away.”</p><p>“I <em>know</em>, dude.”</p><p>“I’m not gonna let him fuck shit up for you anymore. You’re an adult and I don’t have a problem punching bogus face. We’ll save as much as we can from work once we get new jobs and pay him back every red cent he gave us.”</p><p>Ted is most taken back by the way Bill says it. He can’t ever remember hearing him use any sort of curse. He’s always very creative with his language whether it’s good or bad, never so blunt. “I concur, my friend.” Ted doesn’t know what else to say. “We can take more party gigs, if we can get ‘em. We didn’t do <em>so</em> bad at that bar mitzvah last month. They even tipped us!”</p><p>“I think they just felt bad that we sounded so awful, dude.” Bill laughs, all his seriousness gone away. In a hazy, smoky burst. “When I divided up that cash I gave the extra to Jo and Bess, they saved our asses with that medley they played when the kid started getting pouty about it.”</p><p>“We really gotta learn to play better, dude.” Ted turns to lean back against the wall instead of over it. “I hope they get back soon, I could eat your arm.”</p><p>“Go for the leg, my friend, more meat.” Bill smacks his thigh through his jeans and stubs the end of his cigarette out carefully so he doesn’t crush it too much and he can save the rest for later. “I was just thinking about how nice it’s gonna be to sleep in tomorrow after all the work we did today. Then I remembered my dumb mattress didn’t fit in the room.”</p><p>“You can have my bed, Bill. I’ll sleep on the couch.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t do that to you, Ted. It was my own fault for not measuring. Jo must have reminded me a dozen times.”</p><p>“Really, dude, it’s cool! Consider it a thank-you.”</p><p>“Thanks for what?” Bill puts his cigarettes back into his pocket and tucks the lighter in beside them.</p><p>“All this.”</p><p>Bill nods, letting it go even though Ted gets the impression he wants to argue it. “Know what else I’m gonna do tomorrow? I’m not going to the gym.” He leans back and lifts his tee shirt up, patting his stomach. Ted blushes when he does it and he doesn’t know why. His own stomach isn’t that flat. He’s not flabby either! He’s just not motivated enough to work out the way Bill does. “I reckon I got enough lifting in for the next three weeks.”</p><p>Ted laughs and it sounds nervous. “Cardio too, dude. Up and down the stairs so many times.”</p><p>Someone below honks their horn and Bill leans forward again, waving. Ted twists around and catches the caboose of the princesses’ car before it disappears into the parking structure. </p><p>Over burgers and fries and chicken fingers and shakes that never seem to end, they make a plan of attack for the next day. They decide what order they’re going to unpack the rest of the boxes in and make a list of furniture they still need. Bill and Ted think that shelves for their records should be the first thing they get but the babes insist that a table and some chairs for the kitchen and a bed for Bill are more important. They’re also dead set on getting them dishes and pots and pans like microwave meals and paper plates are somehow unacceptable.</p><p>When the babes get ready to leave, kisses passed back and forth in the doorway, Elizabeth stops on the landing outside. She waves Joanna down the stairs and turns to Ted, moving his hair out of his eyes and pushing it off to the side. “We rather took over, didn’t we?” </p><p>Ted shrugs, it’s not a huge deal. If him and Bill were left on their own to get things done they’d probably still be bickering about how to load the U-Haul. Bess and Jo were a huge help, they really were!</p><p>“It’s just… this stuff, household things. It was all we were every really permitted any control of, back home that is. Commissioning clothes or smart little writing desks. Arranging things.”</p><p>“It’s okay, really. I totally get it!”</p><p>“It’s not, darling, but you’re very gracious. This is <em>your</em> place,” she squeezes her eyes shut and laughs. “And I suppose you should be allowed to eat off of paper plates the rest of your lives if you so choose.”</p><p>“Think of all the water we’ll save not doing dishes,” Ted grins and Bess kisses his cheek very sweetly. He waits there at the top of the stairs until he sees them pull out into the driveway.</p><p>Bill is sprawled on the couch yawning when Ted ducks back inside. “Dude, I think I’m gonna hit the sack. You sure you wanna take the couch?”</p><p>“Yeah, of course!” Bill stretches and stands and drags himself into the bedroom. “I think I’m gonna stay up for a little while anyway and fold my clothes.” He gestures at the pile of garbage bags still unopened in the corner. Bill looks surprised. “Feels like the grown up thing to do.”</p><p>“You can totally do mine too if you’re motivated, dude.”</p><p>“Sure!”</p><p>Bill disappears into the bedroom and turns out the light, leaving Ted alone with all the boxes and the bare walls. He does make an earnest effort at folding before he decides he’s had enough. He kicks off his shoes and settles down on the couch and it’s <em>perfect</em> -- but he just can’t relax enough to fall off to sleep. He thinks maybe a shower will help, it always did when he needed to chill out after an argument with his dad or a rough day at school. The white noise of the water falling down always clears his head most thoroughly and if he turns the temperature up high enough the steam gets heavy and it feels like a blanket hugged around him.</p><p>Ted realizes too late that there’s not a drop of shampoo or a bar of soap to be found but he supposes it doesn’t matter that much. Water and a washcloth does just as well… but there aren’t any kind of towels <em>either</em>. Maybe, he thinks, the princesses weren’t too far out of line with their list-making. He’ll just go through the motions, he decides. The point is just to set himself on the path to sleep. He laughs to himself as he pulls off his clothes, flapping the legs of his jeans around like he’s thrashing a set of drums. “<em>Rrrooff</em> to Nev-<em>ah</em>-nev-<em>ah</em> land!”</p><p>Ted turns on the water and sticks his hand under it, waiting for it to turn from stone-cold and unused to warm and inviting. He doesn’t realize how really sore his body is, how completely exhausted he is, until he steps under the spray. He stands there almost dumbly for a long moment, just letting it hit him in the face and soak into his hair. It feels like there’s weird, slippy tentacles crawling over his shoulders and down across his back and chest until he starts scrubbing at himself with his hands and scratching over the wide planes of skin with his stubby nails. Then it’s like he’s broken through the layer of dry sweat and the water curtains him in comforting warmth.</p><p>Ted turns up the heat and turns back and forth, letting the water pound down on his back and then his front and then back again. The tiny bathroom doesn’t take long to turn totally foggy with steam and when he breathes it in it feels like his chest is full and open and his head is slowly working all the cobwebs of the day out of all the little corners in the folds of his brain.</p><p>Wrapped up in all of it, his fear and anxiety melt away.</p><p>No more dad, no more threats of being shipped away to get straightened out.</p><p>No more being told when to blink or breathe or how to wear his hair. He’s going to let it grow out again, he decides, starting right now. Maybe not as long as it used to be -- he would never admit it, but it was kind of a relief to not be so hot all the time -- but never this short. Long enough for Elizabeth to put her hands in, he thinks. When they’re alone and she lets herself go just a little bit. When she’s not so reserved.</p><p>Ted closes his eyes and thinks of Elizabeth smiles when he comes up with a most brilliant lyric or she’s really going to town on the keyboard. He thinks of how happy she was when he told her he was moving out, how proud she was. He thinks about how she’s gonna look when he gets down on his knees and asks her to marry him. How she’s going to light up the room when she says yes and how after they say the <em>I do</em> part how it’s going to be so much different between them.</p><p>Ted wouldn’t change the way Bess is for the world. He doesn’t need to be in her pants all the time to know that he loves her and that she loves him. She could have gone off and picked anyone else in the whole world after Rufus brought her and Jo through in the booth. She <em>chose</em> him.</p><p>But it’s going to be most triumphant to tell her all that in a different way.</p><p>Ted gasps, the water turning too hot for just a second and jolting him out of his daydreaming. His body feels all electric and he looks down at himself and thinks that right now isn’t the best time in the world for a serious chubby. He’s gotta be up early in the morning to go with Bill and Jo and Bess to get all those things on their list. He should be <em>sleeping</em>. That was the whole point of taking a shower.</p><p>Ted sighs and wraps his hand around it. Chub’s not going to take care of itself, he supposes. If he felt like he was all lit up and electric before, touching himself is like being on fire -- and that just makes him totally confused because water really should be stopping that unless it’s a <em>grease </em>fire then water just makes it worse. He was pretty funky, come to really think of it. <em>Could </em>be a grease fire...</p><p>Ted shakes his head and closes his eyes, thinking of Elizabeth. He thinks of how warm and soft she is when she hugs him. How nice it is when she holds his hand and leans really close during a scary movie, still kind of not believing that the monsters on the screen aren’t real even though she knows it isn’t true. How silky smooth her hair is and the way the curls wrap around his fingers when he twists them around. How nice her lips are against his cheek -- against <em>his </em>lips when she lets him steal an honest kiss. How she’s the perfect height to sling his arm around and how her legs go on for days and days.</p><p>Sigourney and Jane and and Goldie and Jamie Lee had <em>nothing</em> on Elizabeth.</p><p>Maybe Sigourney, Ted thinks, rubbing his thumb around his head until the soles of his feet start to tingle and he has to lean back against the wall. But she kind of makes him hot because she terrifies him just a little bit and if anyone watched those space monster flicks and didn’t agree he’d think they were lying.</p><p>Bess doesn’t terrify him, though, and that’s the difference. Fighting monsters with that icy cold glare is exciting but he likes how having Bess around makes him feel like his whole torso is just full up with fat, fuzzy bumble bees. And Ripley couldn’t play the keyboard like Bess does, no she couldn’t!</p><p>The thought of Elizabeth jamming out makes Ted’s heart race. The water makes wild splashy sounds when he tugs on his dick a little faster, thinking of Bess wiggling to the beat of the music and tapping her toes and tossing her hair back and forth like a <em>real</em> rock babe. The only other person he knows who has that much fun playing music is Eddie Van Halen <em>himself</em>.</p><p>Ted shakes his head, trying to shake the thought of Eddie out of there but he’s stuck like glue, strumming his guitar and giving Ted a look that would make a babe just pass out right in the middle of a crowd. He tries to think of Bess instead, walking forward on the stage in his imagination until he’s in the pit with the keys and the drums and there’s Bess banging her head. He can hear her dangly acrylic earrings clacking as they swing back and forth and the plastic of her keys clicks each time her fingers slam against them.</p><p>Ted presses his shoulders against the tile behind him and pushes his hips forward into the almost too hot shower spray. He’s so close -- <em>so utterly, bogusly, excellently close</em>. His toes curl and he has to dig his heels down to keep from sliding because if he stops jerking himself now he thinks he might actually have a coronary. He yanks at his dick as fast as he can with his arm cramping up and he can’t really decide what to do with the other so he just grabs at his chest because he thinks he might need to keep himself from falling right out of his body cartoon dead dude style.</p><p>Ted squeezes his eyes shut as hard as he can, colors exploding across the back of his eyelids. He holds his breath and there’s Elizabeth swimming through all the static rainbows and over his shoulder -- so real it’s like there’s someone actually there behind him -- he feels like there’s whispering in his ear in a familiar voice under the thunder of the shower. </p><p>
  <em>Whoah! Got it bad, got it bad, got it bad! Got it bad -- so bad!</em>
</p><p>It loops around in his imagination over and over until he’s busting all over his fist and his heart is flip-flopping in his chest.</p><p>When his legs start working again, Ted lowers himself down into the tub. The water beats against the top of his head and he laughs. The sound of it echoes all around him. He was thinking of Elizabeth, he reassures himself. Anything else was just because he’s so tired and everything is happening -- like, <em>a lot</em> and all of it most speedily. His head is just all messed up because of it. He didn’t just blow his load over <em>Eddie</em>.</p><p>He’s not a fag.</p><p>He was still thinking about Bess.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Ted is standing in the kitchen in his shorts, eating cereal over the counter out of a styrofoam bowl. He can hear Bill moving around in the bedroom. The springs in the mattress squeak and Ted knows exactly what part he’s sitting on after years of nights and mornings on it. He can picture Bill clearly, sitting on his bed. </p><p>He should get a new mattress, Ted thinks and shakes his head. Maybe after they pay back his dad he can start saving for it. He wants to put money away to get a really nice ring for Bess but his feet do kind of hang off the end of the bed and that squeaky spring can be pretty annoying on a restless night.</p><p>Ted nearly jumps out of his skin when Bill’s hand comes down on his shoulder and he chokes on the Cinnamon Toast Crunch he just shoveled into his mouth.</p><p>“You alright, dude?” Bill asks and peels a bowl off the stack for himself and shakes a pile of sugary squares from the box into it. He crunches on the cereal dry while he pours his milk. “You look most disquieted.”</p><p>Bill looks up at him, chewing, and waits for an answer. Ted’s gut burns.</p><p>“Yeah, dude, I’m good. Just thinking about how much all this stuff is gonna cost today.”</p><p>“Oh man,” Bill talks as he strolls out of the kitchen and into the living room. He drops down onto the couch and his face is the picture of comfort. “I think we’ll be alright. We can probably get a lot at Goodwill -- or the thrift store, they had those cool lamps the babes got for their place!” </p><p>Ted sits down next to him and their knees touch. Bill scoots over to give him some more room. Ted tips the last of his cereal into his mouth straight out of the bowl, slurping the cinnamon-sugar flavored milk. He thinks they could maybe get a big cork board to tack some pictures and stuff on. He could finally display his collection of ticket stubs. He thinks he could put them in a circle all around the stub from <em>Monsters of Rock </em>at Candlestick Park.</p><p><em>Van Halen</em> had been most triumphant as the closing act that night.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Things are more bogus, more completely unbelievable then they ever have been before when Ted comes to the brilliant, if stark, realization that even when he has absolutely nothing -- he has Bill.</p><p>And he wouldn’t ever change that. Would never give that up.</p><p>The day starts most excellently. In spite of everything working against them -- which is mostly their own dumb lack of genuine motivation compounded by the the weight of responsibility Rufus has given them by telling them that their music will unite the world and bring about peace -- things are starting to look up.</p><p>Ms. Wardroe is most kind when she allows the <em>Stallyns </em>to be a part of the Battle of the Bands. Ted knows in his gut that they’re not going to win, but it gives him hope. She must see <em>something</em> in them and maybe some industry dude will be in the audience and they’ll hear how great Jo and Bess are and that will be their foot in the door. They’ll finally be able to have the time and the resources to spend on <em>really</em> becoming a band and then they will write the song that will unite the world and fulfill their destinies.</p><p>Ted wonders, as he’s lugging his amp out to the van, if they could somehow get a hold of Rufus and ask to use the phone booth again. Then, he thinks, they could just go to the future and talk to themselves. Or buy their own album and listen to it and try to reverse-write the song. But, that would probably be cheating and then they might just mess everything up instead of sowing the seeds of utopia.</p><p>It’s most appropriate, Ted thinks, that they’re going to celebrate the princesses’ birthdays today. There’s just so much to be happy about.</p><p>Bess and Jo are just finishing up bringing their own equipment out to the van and Bill and Ted head back inside to finish filling out their release forms for the broadcast of the <em>Battle</em>. It’s mostly just <em>sign here and we own your face</em> so it doesn’t take too long. </p><p>“Dude,” Bill says as they step outside. “We gotta win at that concert.”</p><p>Something clicks in Ted’s head, the thread of all that wonderfulness looping through feelings he’s had since he danced with Elizabeth under the dusty old disco ball at senior prom. “Yeah! Then we can finally propose to the ladies!”</p><p>“I know,” Bill agrees. “There’s no way we could raise a family on the money we make at <em>Pretzels ‘N Cheese</em>, dude.” </p><p>That tickles something in the back of Ted’s brain and makes him sweat, he’s suddenly very nervous and he doesn’t know why. </p><p>“I’ll call Missy, tell her we’re on our way.”</p><p>“Should be a most resplendent birthday party,” Ted says, pushing the sudden weirdness away. “Shall we, ladies?” The smile Bess turns on Ted when she closes the back door of the van makes everything else evaporate.</p><p>The princesses think that they’re just all going to go out and have dinner and go to a movie. Bess has made Ted promise that they will not go for ice cream -- the waiters and the whole <em>Ziggie Piggy</em> thing make her most non-non-creeped and Ted puked his guts up the last time they tried to do the giant sundae anyway. She thinks he might be lactose intolerant but Ted really doesn’t have a problem with feet, in fact, he thinks Bess’s toes are pretty cute and he’s not sure what that has to do with eating like a gallon of ice cream anyway.</p><p>Per their most excellent and innocent deception, Bill slips away to call Missy when they get to the babe’s house. She’s supposed to make sure everyone’s cars are parked away from the building and everybody is quiet when they come up to the apartment so it’ll be a genuine surprise. It’s strange, Ted thinks, conspiring with Missy. She’s been in the middle of such heinous messes the last couple years, things that have turned the boring normalcy of Bill and Ted’s lives on their heads. And she’s… she’s really not that nice.</p><p>Ted never could understand why she was with Mr. Preston but he <em>did</em> understand that she was mean to Bill. Downright rude. And it was all hidden under this weird, pretty mask like she was some kind of <em>Snow White</em> fantasy and Bill was the dwarf that got to bask in her glow. She was always making him feel bad, always trying to exert some totally unearned matriarchal authority over him. And Bill was just too darn nice to resist it. He cared about his dad being happy too much to say anything.</p><p>Ted doesn’t understand really why Joanna and Elizabeth pal around with her but the mysteries of babe friendships are not something he could ever even pretend to have a clue about. Maybe because they didn’t grow up with Missy -- didn’t go to school with her and then suddenly have to call her <em>Mom</em> -- they didn’t have all that messed up baggage.</p><p>Ted has already unloaded most of their stuff out of the van into the girls’ garage, carefully carrying it past their car, when Bill reappears. “Alright, dude, everything is set! This is gonna be awesome.”</p><p>“What’s all set?” Joanna asks, hopping down from the back of the van with the last of her drum cases.</p><p>“Ah, um, dinner reservations!”</p><p>“You made reservations for pizza?”</p><p>“Well, ah, I wanted to make sure they didn’t stick us at the table by the bathroom again.”</p><p>Jo grins and passes the case she’s holding to him. “You’re always so thoughtful.” Bill blushes and she plants a kiss against his cheek.</p><p>“Hey, um, how about you two meet us at our place when you’re ready?” Bill suggests, passing the case off to Ted. “We wanted to -- to --”</p><p>“We wanted to put some nicer threads on. You and Bess always look so great when we go out and it’s a most special occasion.” Ted puts the case down and it looks like the back of the van is emptied so he closes the doors up. Joanna smiles and tells him he’s sweet and that will be fine.</p><p>Bill breathes out all in a rush when they’re finally back in the van and on their way. “You know, I know it’s nothing bad that we’re hiding but lying to them feels really bad, dude.”</p><p>Ted nods. He and Elizabeth share everything just as much as him and Bill do. He’s glad that the party is just over the horizon.</p><p>They <em>do</em> go to <em>Ziggie’s</em> for ice cream, but it’s just a cake. They pick it up on their way home and stash it in the fridge because it’s rock solid and they’ll never be able to cut it that way. They had to argue with the guy over the freezer case when he said they’d made a mistake on their order and he made sure that the bright red icing on top only said <em>Happy 21st Birthday</em>. He’d finally relented and added the five and it only looks a little bit messed up and it’s too late to worry about it now anyway.</p><p>The surprise is almost ruined in the end.</p><p>The door flies open and Jo and Bess come tumbling over the threshold, laughing at something one of them said just seconds before. Elizabeth’s keys jingle as the door bumps against the squishy stopper on the wall and everyone in the apartment freezes. The ladies gather themselves and look up, confused at first and then a little shocked at the room full of people.</p><p>Ted’s brain fires on all cylinders. They usually knock before they come in! Unless they did and it just wasn’t loud enough over everyone talking. He looks around and no one is moving. Bess and Jo are frozen in the doorway. He flings both arms into the air, smacking his knuckles against the ceiling fan and making it spin lazily. “Happy birthday!”</p><p>Bill rushes forward and yanks Joanna inside, twirling her around. The room erupts in cheers and shouts and Ted squeezes through everyone to get to Bess. He slings his arm around her shoulder and pulls her close and she laughs while she tries to grab her keys and shove them in her jacket pocket. “Were you surprised?”</p><p>“Very!”</p><p>“A good surprise?”</p><p>“Excellent!” </p><p>Ted laughs, “You didn’t see all the streamers and stuff outside?”</p><p>Bess purses her mouth in confusion and steps out the door, leaning back over the threshold with Ted holding onto her jacket. “Oh!” she exclaims. “Rather oblivious, aren’t we?”</p><p>“Most ‘blivious,” Ted snorts and pulls her back upright. He tries to land a kiss on her lips and she turns her cheek, pink with consciousness of all their pals watching. “There’s lots of food in the kitchen, I’m sure you’re starving. I know I am.”</p><p>Bess leans into him, tucking her face against his neck and breathing in real deep. “I’ll say hello to everyone first.”</p><p>“Great! We can go down to the patio then.” Ted glances around at the people packed into the tiny space of their living room. “We might actually get a seat there.”</p><p>“Sounds like a plan,” Bess laughs.</p><p>A short while into the party, Mr. Preston arrives. He seems really happy to be there, much more so than he’s seemed in a while. He has big hugs for the ladies and keeps grinning like he’s waiting to be given some fantastic news while he chats with Bill and Jo. He’s happy, it seems, until Missy comes back inside from hanging out down on the patio.</p><p>“You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to, Dad,” Bill says earnestly. Jo steps away, steering Missy to the other side of the room away from the Preston men before she has a chance to see Bill’s dad. “I get it.”</p><p>Mr. Preston shakes his head. “No, this is supposed to be for Joanna.”</p><p>“And Elizabeth!”</p><p>“Right. I won’t let something silly like seeing my ex-wife ruin the fun.” He claps Bill on the shoulder. “I won’t make it awkward, I promise.”</p><p>He makes it awkward. But Ted doesn’t think he does it on purpose.</p><p>Ted’s dad arrives well into the evening and Ted feels like the whole situation is a time-bomb waiting to go off. He can only hope that maybe it’ll be a quick appearance. He’s pretty sure Colonel Oats is in town and why would Ted’s dad want to waste his time at a (five hundred and) twenty-first birthday party when he could catch up with his oldest pal? He’s probably just here to pick Missy up.</p><p>He greets them politely enough. He wishes the ladies a happy birthday and gives them each a card. Ted knows from experience that they’ve each probably got twenty-one dollars in them and he thinks it’s kind of weird and nice and dadly of him. If only he believed them about what the ladies' actual age was.</p><p>“So, I understand you two have a little something else to celebrate tonight?”</p><p>Bess is excited to share the news and her joyous mood is infectious. “If we win, I can totally pay you back the money I owe you!”</p><p>The apartment would finally <em>really </em>be Ted’s -- and Bill’s. It’s been impossible to save anything. Every time they have just a little bit of extra cash something else comes up and they’re breaking another piggy bank to pay it off. They’ve never wanted to worry Bess and Jo with any of it. They’re both doing so well! They’ve got sweet jobs -- Bess working at the desk at the pediatrician’s office in town and Jo giving drum lessons and working at the music store at the mall -- and they have that great little house that they rent and their sporty little car…</p><p>Ted always feels like just a little bit of a failure when he thinks too hard about it. But <em>really</em> him and Bill are doing their best given the circumstances and all the pressure and --</p><p>Ted’s dad is usually pretty willing to give them what they need, with the stipulation, of course, that they’ll pay him back in time. Bill insists that it’s just to keep them on a short leash, that he’s keeping Ted under his thumb and still trying to turn him into something he’s not even now that he’s adult enough to drink, smoke, vote, and go to war.</p><p>The smile falls off of Ted’s dad’s face. Ted thinks he was expecting their most excellent news to be something different but he really can’t imagine what.</p><p>“And what if you <em>don’t</em> win?”</p><p>“Well, um, I guess -- umm,” Bess looks worried while Ted struggles to give an answer her arm around him squeezes just a little tighter. Her fingers scratch his side in a way that feels reassuring. “I guess I could sell some more blood.”</p><p>He could try selling some other stuff too but when he tried and the nurse at that clinic told him there were plenty of magazines in the bathroom and handed him that plastic cup it just felt <em>way</em> too weird and he bolted.</p><p>“Perhaps you could think about selling a couple of the instruments.” Ted’s dad was always on him about it. They didn’t know how to play and they weren’t doing anything to learn, he reasoned. The girls should keep the drums and the keyboard but Bill and Ted should just cash out on everything else. He didn’t understand -- refused to understand -- that they couldn’t do that.</p><p>Even if Rufus hadn’t told them of their most excellent destiny, they were the <em>Wyld Stallyns</em> and they were going to rock the freaking world.</p><p>Colonel Oats materializes out of thin air and the first thought that Ted has is that they immediately have to change their address. The next is that he needs Bess to step away, he doesn’t want Oats anywhere near her. The next is that Oats’ hand <em>squeezing</em> the back of his neck and pinning him to the spot with his too-firm handshake makes him want to peel off his skin and run screaming.</p><p>Missy’s appearance, for once, is a most welcome distraction.</p><p>Ted has to wonder if she’s lining up husband number three, the way she looks at <em>Oatsey</em>, and he thinks that will be just fine to have her move to Alaska with him.</p><p>A gaggle of babes comes through the door and pulls Jo’s and Bess’s attention away. They hesitate to leave. Bess clings to Ted’s side and she keeps shifting herself between Ted and wherever Oats happens to be loitering. Him and Bill assure them that they should go have fun, it is their party after all! Ted has to admit that the break from being the center of attention, or being attached to the center of attention at least, is most welcome.  </p><p>He slips away into the bedroom and groans at the mountain of jackets and purses piled on his and Bill’s beds. He pushes them over and sits. His head is buzzing from all the noise of the party now that he’s in a quiet space. He’s got too much to think about now. There’s the Battle and the ladies and his dad and all that money and now Colonel Oats is in his home and it’s all just feeling like a big sign telling him to pack it in. He should do what his dad has been suggesting since he graduated high school: get a real job, focus on some realistic priorities.</p><p>Ted wonders how difficult it would be to get into the police academy. Being Captain Logan’s son would probably help. He wouldn’t ever really want to be the captain or anything, too. He could be happy being a traffic cop. He could work in one of the school zones. He could keep the kids coming in and out of the schools safe, he thinks. Maybe his dad would be a little less on top of him then. He’d be okay then.</p><p>“Dude, you look like you saw a ghost or something.” Bill slips into the bedroom and shuts the door, cutting off the flood of sound as suddenly as it rushed in again. “You alright?”</p><p>“Yeah, dude! Just tired. There’s so many people out there.”</p><p>“I know! Good thing our neighbors are chill, right?” Bill doesn’t bother to move the stuff all over his bed, he just sits down right on top of it. “My dad went home. I think it was too much for him.” Bill shrugs and starts to roll his sleeves up. “It’s a little bogus. He was having a good time for a while there. I think Missy and your dad are getting ready to leave too. Oats got annoyed with Bess.”</p><p>“What?” Ted springs up off his bed and turns toward the door. “Is she okay?”</p><p>“Yeah, man! She told him he ran a prison for unloved children and there was more than enough of it between you and her so he could just run along back to the arctic now.” Bill imitates the soft tone of Bess’s voice and grins while he talks.</p><p>Ted is a little taken back. He’s never heard of Elizabeth being so <em>forceful</em> like that. Confident, yeah totally! She was practically the one to decide that him and Bill should rescue her and Jo. He’s kinda proud of her. “Wow. I’m sorry I missed that.”</p><p>“I’m not sure she would have said it in front of you.”</p><p>“You’re probably right.” Ted sits back down and studies his feet. His toes point together, like always. “Hey, Bill?”</p><p>“Yes, Ted?”</p><p>“I don’t want to wait until after we win tomorrow to propose to the ladies. I wrote down all the things I wanna say to Bess last night and… I wanna say them.”</p><p>“Dude! I did too! But, you know, Jo.” They laugh, pulling a quick air guitar. “We could do that,” Bill says more seriously. “I know the babes said that they didn’t need presents, but this could be a good one.”</p><p>“It’s more than about presents, my friend.”</p><p>Bill nods. “I know.”</p><p>The rest of the party flies by in a blur. Missy had said she would help them clean up but being as she’s left with Ted’s dad and Oats, Ted doesn’t think that’s going to happen any time soon. The apartment is a <em>mess</em> and Ted can’t imagine proposing to Bess in the middle of all of it. He thinks they might go downstairs to the patio. Under the moon and the stars would be most romantic and it’s not too chilly out.</p><p>Bess and Jo are out in the living room saying goodbye and thanking the last of their guests and Ted ducks back into the bedroom again as they follow someone outside to walk them to their car. He opens the drawer in the night table and reaches into the back to grab the tissue paper packet carefully hidden there.</p><p>The rings aren’t much to shake a stick at and Ted is highly, most painfully aware of it. But him and Bill picked them because they weren’t like anything any other babe would have. They weren’t just boring circle-shaped stones. They went well with the ladies’ sense of style, Ted thought. </p><p>If Bill and Ted had learned anything by watching their fathers, they knew that rings and proposals and vows were too easy to treat like currency. They wanted Jo and Bess to know, in no uncertain terms, that they love them. The depths of their devotion were totally the deepest and most non-negotiable. Something unique, they reasoned, would tell the princesses that.</p><p>There were budgetary constraints, of course, that dictated limits of the choice. The van had broken down and they’d had to use their savings to get it fixed. How were they supposed to get to the few gigs they had or back and forth to work without it? But, they really did think that Joanna and Elizabeth would like them. Genuinely!</p><p>Ted grips the little package in his fist so tight he can feel the tissue paper disintegrating in his sweaty palm. He can hear Bill shouting downstairs to the babes that they’ll be right there.</p><p>“Are you ready Ted?”</p><p>“I think so, Bill.” Ted opens his hand and lets Bill have one of the rings. He pats his pocket and hears the paper he’s been carrying around for the last twenty-four hours crinkle inside of it. He takes a deep breath and lets it out and follows Bill down to the patio.</p><p>They have an innocent enough conversation. They talk about the party -- the people and the food and the music. Ted apologizes for how weird everything got once Oats showed up and Jo and Bess assure him that it’s nothing to worry about. </p><p>“I don’t think he’ll be bothering us for a little while, darling,” Bess says, smiling at Ted so sweetly he feels like he might burst into tears. It would be most undudely but he’s not sure he’d be able to stop it once it started.</p><p>“You probably notice we haven’t given you our gifts yet,” Ted begins. It’s now or never. He’s going to lose his nerve if he waits much longer and he thinks Bill might feel the same.</p><p>“How many times do we have to tell you that we’re not interested in gifts?” Jo laughs and pops a cheese doodle from the bag on the table into her mouth, crunching happily. “You finding us,” she continues, much more seriously. “You helping us navigate the utter weirdness of this century.” She reaches out and fluffs the cloud of curls sticking through Bill’s hat. “Caring for us, letting us be our own people. <em>That’s</em> the gift.”</p><p>“Being the polar opposite of a couple of Royal Ugly Dudes,” Bess adds with a grin.</p><p>“No,” Bill says quietly. “This is important.”</p><p>Bill and Ted turn toward each other and say, “Excuse us, dude.” They stand and lead the princesses away from the table for just a bit of privacy. </p><p>Ted sits Bess down and sinks to his knees in front of her. He feels… he feels <em>a lot</em>. Bess is looking down at him attentively. It’s one of the things he loves most about her: she listens. Really listens, with both ears, and doesn’t try to talk over him or interrupt or correct him. She <em>does</em> let him know when he’s wrong or she thinks he hasn’t quite gotten something. But she does it in a way that makes him want to figure things out, not feel stupid.</p><p>“I wrote this last night.”</p><p>Bess nods and waits. Her face is open and shining under the patio flood lights. Ted pulls the paper from his pocket and straightens it out. Here goes!</p><p>“Elizabeth. As I swim though this <em>dark</em> and <em>fearful</em> sea of existence, <em>surrounded</em> by various creatures -- Sharks! Eels. Yellowtail and also barnacles. And algae, man-o-wars, starfish, blowfish, catfish -- oh, no, that’s fresh water!”</p><p>Bess is smiling like she’s entertained. He’s not sure if he’s insulted or happy that she thinks he’s being funny. But, maybe she’s smiling like that because she appreciates his sincerity?</p><p>“What I mean to say is: I realize when we took you out of England, we said the future had some really good stuff.”</p><p>“And all that stuff hasn’t actually worked out the way we thought,” Bill adds from behind. </p><p>Ted nods, the sentiment right on. Bess is still quiet, processing. He doesn’t need to tell him off, he knows they’ve messed up. <em>He’s</em> messed up. But he’s going to make it better and he knows that she trusts him to do it.</p><p>“But it will! We hope,” they say together. Ted feels like they rehearsed it, everything is going so smoothly.</p><p>“The day after tomorrow, if things work out…” Ted feels like he’s got a belly fully of really most agitated butterflies. He turns toward Bill for a little reassurance and then back to Bess. The butterflies don’t settle down, but he thinks he can finish. Bess looks so <em>hopeful</em> it makes his chest hurt. “Will you marry us?”</p><p><em>Me</em>. Ted thinks. <em>Will you marry me?</em> But it’s already out of his mouth and Bill’s mouth and it doesn’t seem to make a difference. Jo and Bess look at each other and do that thing that babes do where they have a whole conversation with one little expression.</p><p>“<em>Theodore</em>,” Bess breathes. She nods. She doesn’t have to say <em>yes</em>. She looks like a yes.</p><p>Ted pulls the ring out of his other pocket and turns toward Bill to make sure Jo’s said yes, too, and the butterflies in his stomach erupt in an excited storm of flapping wings. He turns back to Bess and slips the ring on her finger and he reaches up to give her a small kiss on the cheek and honestly there was never a more perfect moment for celebratory guitar-ing.</p><p>Bess helps Ted up off the ground and holds his hands in hers for just a moment, looking him in the eye so squarely he thinks she can see right into his brain. She kisses him fully full-on the lips and Ted imagines fireworks going off overhead. Bess looks up at the sky and there’s lightning cracking across the dark expanse of it. She gasps as it makes everything like daylight for just a second.</p><p>“You two get inside!” Ted urges. They don't have to be told twice. Jo and Bess sprint toward the stairs to get in before the rain starts.</p><p>It’s funny, Ted thinks. He doesn’t remember hearing about a storm today.</p><p>Bill unties the garbage bag from the railing that everyone at the party ignored and they sweep the debris off the tables into it. He flings it toward the dumpster as they run by and they’re both out of breath when they get back inside the apartment.</p><p>Joanna and Elizabeth are hugging and sniffling in the middle of the kitchen.</p><p>“Oh no,” Bill says. “What’s wrong? Did you change your minds?”</p><p>“Gracious, <em>no</em>, William. We’re just incredibly happy.” Jo wipes her eyes with her sleeve and Bess peels herself away to come over to Ted and wrap her arms around him.</p><p>“I am a little sad, I guess,” Bess says with her head on his shoulder. “We don’t get to share this with anyone from home. Our father was a <em>dickweed</em>, as you say. But our ladies were always very nice, they were good friends.” She sniffs and looks up at him. “Where’s Rufus with the phone booth when you need him?”</p><p>Ted hugs Bess more tightly and his eyes sting. He doesn’t care who sees him and really, who but Bess and Bill and Jo <em>really </em>matter? Ted buries his face against the side of Bess’s neck, all of her bouncy curls tickling his nose.</p><p>“Oh no, Theodore, what’s wrong?”</p><p>“I’m sad that <em>you’re</em> sad.” He sniffs, he doesn’t want to snot on her. “But I’m just so happy.”</p><p>Everything else seems so far away. All of the years of fighting and feeling bad. All of the wondering if he’d ever meet anyone who thought he was worth something, who made <em>him</em> feel like he was worth something. All of the <em>totally bogus</em> stuff his dad had ever put him through. All of it is just miles and miles from him while he’s standing there holding Bess -- his <em>fiancé </em>-- and his best friend in the whole universe is there, too, and <em>he’s</em> happy and getting everything he’s ever wanted. It’s all <em>so much</em>.</p><p>Bess hugs him back just as hard and Ted distantly registers that the bedroom door opens and closes. Him and Bess just stand there, clinging to each other. Ted feels like he’s on the edge of real hysterics but he manages to keep it in check. After a while he pulls back and looks at Bess as seriously as she’d looked at him. His neck is wet and his hoodie feels damp and Bess’s face is very shiny and her nose is very pink.</p><p>“Princess Elizabeth of Medieval England? I love you most tremendously.”</p><p>“I love you, too, Sir Theodore of San Dimas.”</p><p>The bright, light, molten-gold feeling Ted has is shattered in an instant.</p><p>Ted feels like he’s both entirely numb and completely engulfed in fire while he listens in on the phone call, his forehead pressed to Bill’s over the receiver. It’s Joanna’s voice on the line, there’s no doubt about that. But she doesn’t sound like herself. She sounds cold and cruel. He’s never known that tone before, not even when him and Bill really had messed up most egregiously. Jo and Bess were always patient, always understanding, always kind.</p><p>Even they had their limits, Ted guesses. </p><p>When Bill hangs up, Ted struggles to hold back hurt, angry tears. He’s embarrassed by it. Only minutes ago wasn’t he holding onto Bess sobbing from sheer joy? Hadn’t he held onto Bill, choking on relief and hope?</p><p>“Call them back,” Ted whispers.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Call them <em>back.</em>”</p><p>“Dude, you heard her. They changed their minds.”</p><p>“Bill! I <em>said</em>, call them back!”</p><p>“My friend, what do you think that’s going to accomplish? We’ll go over to their place in the morning and see if they’re willing to talk to us.”</p><p>“Give me the damn phone then!” Ted reaches over to grab the phone from Bill and he dances away with it in the most morbid game of keep-away Ted has ever played. “You only talked to Joanna!” Ted shouts. Spit flies off his lips and his face feels too hot. “Elizabeth didn’t say anything! She didn’t! You’re putting words in her mouth!”</p><p>“Ted, stop!”</p><p>“Shut up, Bill!”</p><p>Nothing feels right after that. They catch their breath and retreat to the couch and turn on the TV to stop the apartment from feeling so silent and oppressive. Ted sinks into himself. He can’t remember ever feeling this low, not even the first time his dad sat him down and told him that he would be going to Alaska and he’d be going alone. He feels hollowed out and filled up with cheap vinegar. </p><p>And then suddenly, Bill and Ted are looking at themselves again. They’re dressed the same so the other thems can’t be from too far into the future. They don’t look like they’re any older or anything. Something about them seems off, but Future Ted knows exactly how many fingers Ted is going to hold up and they know about Jo and Bess. What’s more, they say they’re there to help. Maybe the off-feeling is just Ted, he thinks. It’s because he feels so non-non-non-non-heinous. It’s because he’s sad and scared and devastated. He’ not thinking straight. But Future Ted seems to have himself pulled together, so things must turn out okay. Right?</p><p>They’re just being mean because they’ve lived through being dumped by the ladies, too.</p><p>They’re a little rough around the edges and it’s understandable.</p><p>They’ve been through just as much as Bill and Ted have -- if not more, right? Because they’re from the future.</p><p>There’s only so much that Ted can find an excuse for. No matter how down he felt, no matter how heinously, egregiously horrible he felt about himself for anything else, he wouldn’t <em>ever</em> treat Bill the way Future Ted is.</p><p>Does the devastation of losing Joanna and Elizabeth turn them evil in the near future?</p><p>It’s almost unsurprising when Future Bill and Future Ted rip their skin open and reveal themselves as robots. It’s just really the way Ted’s day is going -- and it’s way less painful than the alternative. But the thing is, the ladies still probably hate them. They’re not here in the desert but Ted thinks that might just mean that they haven’t gotten there yet. Bill and Ted and these other thems drove all night, straight through across the state. Jo and Bess might have slept first. That would seem like the sensible thing to do.</p><p>Ted is only upset that apparently the other thems want to kill their present counterparts. Maybe it would solve things, Ted things. They could patch things up with Jo and Bess, clearly the superior versions. And then at least one Ted would get to be happy. And with a superior Ted, Bess could be happy, too. Maybe he’d be able to give her all the things that Ted can’t -- a real life, not just being a wife to the guy who pours fake cheese into plastic cups in the food court.</p><p>When the Future Robot Bill pushes Ted off of the cliff, it’s a most impossible rush. He’s falling and he’s flying and he’s terrified but somehow none of it matters. He wakes up dead with the weirdest clarity he’s ever felt.</p><p>No Ted but him is going to go be with Bess. No Ted but him is going to live his life. Not a Future Ted or a Robot Ted or a Future Robot Ted -- good or evil or whatever the heck they are.</p><p>Death himself isn’t going to stop him.</p><p>He’s got nothing left to lose, so why not try? The worst thing that could happen already has.</p><p>Bill and Ted have walked twenty-five miles back to San Dimas when something that seems really important clicks into place in Ted’s brain: <em>Bill and Ted</em> have walked twenty-five miles back to San Dimas. Bill is there beside him, walking double-time to keep up with his own stride. Bill was there beside him in the back of the van. Bill was there on the couch with him when he felt like his world was ending. Bill was there beside him when he asked Bess to marry him. Bill was there beside him at the biggest audition of their lives so far. Bill was there beside him… always.</p><p>Ted halts in the middle of the road, feeling like he’s walked right into a brick wall.</p><p>“What’s the matter, dude? We gotta keep moving.” Bill stops and turns around. He’s a little exasperated looking and Ted can’t really blame him. “Everything is gonna be fine Ted. We’re going to warn the babes about the other us’s. We’re going to figure out how to be alive again. And we’re going to do it in time to perform at midnight.”</p><p>“You really think so?”</p><p>“Of course, my friend. You and me? Nothing’s impossible.”</p><p>“You and me.”</p><p>Bill’s mouth ticks up on one side into a smile and he lifts his cap off to scratch his head. “C’mon, dude,” he says, and they pick up the pace just a little bit. The last twenty-five miles left don’t seem all that far.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first thing they do is dial the number that will bring them back to that morning. They should get a do-over, they decide. Have the whole day perfect, as if the robots hadn’t massively messed everything up and killed Bill and Ted and nearly killed Jo and Bess.</p><p>They land in the ladies’ backyard and watch quietly while Past Jo and Past Bess get into their car and drive off. </p><p>“We’re on our way to your place,” Joanna explains. “You’d called -- well, <em>they</em> called -- and said that you had another surprise for us, that you’d written us a song for tonight, and you wanted us to come over right away to hear it.”</p><p>“We even brought bagels with us.” Bess frowns and stares hard at the car as it backs out of the driveway. “They were still hot and everything. But Ted -- the other Ted -- insisted we listen first.”</p><p>“The next thing we knew, we were in the bedroom and you very much weren’t yourselves.”</p><p>“We were there,” Bill confesses. “We were dead though, you know, ghost dudes. You couldn’t hear us or see us -- but you did walk through us.”</p><p>Ted reaches out and takes Elizabeth’s hand. “We were very impressed with how you handled those evil metalheads. Even if it did kinda hurt.” Elizabeth offers him a watery smile and leans in to put her forehead against his. “Hey! I have an idea.”</p><p>“What is it, Ted?” Bill asks.</p><p>“Let’s get married.” Bess laughs and reminds him they’ve already said yes -- robots be damned. “No, I mean right now.”</p><p>“Ted, we haven’t won the Battle yet,” Bill reasons.</p><p>“Who cares?” Ted asks, squeezing Bess’s hand tight in his. “Maybe we’ll lose. Should that stop us? I love you,” he says turning from Bill to Elizabeth. “I’m gonna get a real job. A good one. When we were at the police station trying to get my dad to help, when we were still dead, there was all sorts of fliers for jobs on the board by the desk. I’m not so bad at typing -- I can ask Dad to help me get a spot in records or something. He’d like that. And then I could be a good husband, Elizabeth. A real good one. I could get you a house and we could have a family and I wouldn’t smell like cheese dip at all except when we actually went to <em>Pretzles N’ Cheese</em> because we wanted to.”</p><p>“Dude,” Bill breathes and Joanna clings to him.</p><p>Bess shakes her head. “I don’t want that, Theodore.”</p><p>“You really did change your mind, then.”</p><p>“No, I don’t want you to type records for your father because you would hate it. You’d be miserable. I want you to play music, with your best friend, because you love it.” She turns to Joanna and raises a brow. “What do you think?”</p><p>Jo bends down just a fraction to plant a kiss on Bill’s cheek. “I think we should get married right now.” Jo and Bess grin and throw their arms into an air guitar. </p><p>“Well, alright!” Bill sticks his hand up and Ted smacks it. “We gotta find a ride to the courthouse then, I guess.”</p><p>The wedding is quick and sweet. The clerk thinks they’re charming and calls the judge and tells her that they’ve got a set of early birds under a time crunch. Ted is stunned at how cooperative everyone is. And even more stunned at the absolute banger of a kiss Elizabeth lays on him when they say <em>I do</em>. She wraps her arms around him and swings him back like he’s a blushing damsel -- and he really is blushing, he just can’t stop -- and kisses the breath right out of him. The judge and the little official people in their beige suits who are there to be witnesses clap and then Ted is all wrapped up in everyone’s arms -- Elizabeth’s and Joanna’s and Bill’s and everyone is laughing and crying and Ted doesn’t ever remember feeling as incredible as he does in that moment.</p><p>“Oh my <em>god</em>,” Ted breathes as they all step out into the bright, mid-morning sun on the courthouse stairs. “We’re <em>married</em>.” He grins at Bill and it feels so nice to do he thinks his face might break. “I guess we’ll have to honeymoon at the music store because we need some lessons, dude. And the ladies can start working on the song, maybe? Joanna, your sense of meter is unparalleled.”</p><p>Jo blushes and Bess agrees. They start down the steps and when they hit the sidewalk, Bill halts. “Wait!”</p><p>“Did we forget something?” Ted frowns. “Were we supposed to set something else up? I thought we took care of the sandbag and the gun and all that.”</p><p>“No, dude. Think about this for a minute. We have the booth. We can take a moment and just, you know, breathe.”</p><p>“No, don’t you remember? The clock is always running.”</p><p>“Yeah, dude, but we know the time game now.” Bill turns to Joanna and takes both her hands in his. “We could go on a honeymoon. A whole week. Two, even! And we could take as much time as we need to get good at playing and write the song that’s gonna bring everyone together. De Nomolos made the broadcast go all over the world, right? So <em>everyone</em> will hear it. We could take a whole year if we needed to, to get real good.”</p><p>“To be most triumphant,” Joanna says.</p><p>“Utterly bodacious,” Elizabeth adds.</p><p>“But we have to get back before midnight!” Ted reminds them.</p><p>“Well, yeah, dude. We just have to make sure we dial the number to bring us back to right that moment, like a <em>second</em> after we leave. And then it’ll be like we were never gone,” Bill reasons.</p><p>“Elizabeth,” Joanna whispers. “We have a <em>booth</em>. We could go home. Just for a visit.”</p><p>Bess’s face brightens even more. “We could honeymoon in the lake country -- go right back to the day we left! No one would know a thing. Everyone would still be at the palace preparing for that awful wedding.” She turns to Ted and holds his face in her hands. “The one we never had to go to because two very strange boys turned up.”</p><p>Ted can’t help but laugh. “Mrs. Logan, we’ll do whatever you want to do.”</p><p>“I very much like the sound of that,” Bess laughs. The bus pulls up at the corner and she grabs his hand to tug him toward it. “Come on, then!”</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>“Whoah!” They all shout as they fly through the circuits of time. The phone booth is cozily crowded and Ted is pressed between Bess and Bill and the force of their flight means he totally can’t move. And he doesn’t want to. <em>He’s so happy</em>. He doesn’t even care what his dad will say about any of it. He’s never believed him about how they passed their history report or how they met the princesses or even that the princesses are princesses. Whatever he thinks doesn’t matter anymore.</p><p>The huge house -- the ladies say it’s not a palace or a castle but it’s way more than any vacation home Ted has seen, the houses out on the beach at Santa Carla are like little cottages and this is <em>not</em> that -- is already full of people when they arrive. They land in the gardens and Bill mutters about how he still hates landings as they stumble out of the booth. A pair of dudes that look like they plant things and trim things just about pass out when it happens. There’s more people like that inside. Ted realizes it’s the staff, that a big place like this needs a lot of people to keep in running, but it’s still wild.</p><p>The staff seems really surprised to see Joanna and Elizabeth and very confused about who Bill and Ted are and a little horrified by everyone’s clothes. The ladies assure them that everything is alright and that Bill and Ted -- Lords William and Theodore of San Dimas -- are indeed their husbands. Their father changed his mind, they say. He learned some damning information about the ugly dudes they were meant to marry and selected these fine lords himself. They’ve decided to come here for a little while while their father smooths everything over with the court.</p><p>Ted wonders if it’s the same kind of court they just came from and thinks he’s probably wrong. But, that doesn’t matter either because the bed in the room that one of the serving ladies brings them to is the most massive, squishiest bed Ted has ever laid eyes on and all he wants to do when he sees it is <em>sleep</em> and he <em>does</em> for seventeen whole hours.</p><p>Everything feels like a most bizarre dream and Ted forgets where he is for a moment when he wakes up. His feet aren’t hanging off the end of the mattress. He can’t hear any traffic outside. The neighbor’s dog isn’t barking.</p><p>And Elizabeth is curled into his side.</p><p>She’s so warm and the nightgown she’s wearing is so soft and her hair smells so nice when he cranes his neck down and breathes in. It’s really just impossible to wipe the smile off his face after that.</p><p>Bill looks like he fits right in when Ted and Bess make their sleepy way down to the dining room. There are all manner of pastry and fruit on the table and Bill is there sitting behind the mountain of it all like he’s gotten tickets to the King’s Table at the Renaissance Faire. </p><p>“Good morning, Lord William,” Ted says in his best impression of an English noble-dude.</p><p>“Lord Theodore.”</p><p>“Didja sleep well?” Bill asks with a wink.</p><p>“Yeah, dude, I can’t ever remember sleeping so good to be most honest.”</p><p>Bill makes a face and Ted knows that there’s a joke he hasn’t gotten but he lets it go. Joanna and Elizabeth come back from telling the kitchen staff that they’re all ready to eat and settle down at the table. Ted’s struck by how really breathtaking they are. He knows they used to dress up in these exquisite threads all the time and they never ever look shabby in San Dimas either, but <em>wow</em>.</p><p>Jo shrieks and laughs when Bill pulls her into his lap. They look so happy. <em>Bill</em> looks so non-measurably happy. It makes Ted feel strange in a way that he can’t much put his finger on but he forgets it just as fast when Bess sinks her fingers into his hair and scratches at his scalp. She’s standing behind his chair and she’s talking to Jo and Ted can’t hear a single thing anyone is saying and he’s pretty sure he’s going to give himself a charley horse if his toes curl any tighter.</p><p>“Are you <em>really </em>happy, Ted?” Elizabeth asks him that night when they’ve crawled into bed.</p><p>“Really, really, Bess.”</p><p>“You’re sure?”</p><p>“Aren’t you?”</p><p>“Incandescently!”</p><p>Ted laughs. She’s happy like a light-bulb but there aren’t any around here so she’s the brightest thing in the room. Bess scoots closer and kisses him, totally taking his breath away. He could get very used to the concept of maybe needing to carry around an oxygen tank the rest of his life if she keeps that up.</p><p>Being with Elizabeth, fully full-on being with Elizabeth, is an experience.</p><p>Ted feels weird and fumbly like he’s never been with a babe before -- and he guesses he really hasn’t, not like this. But he’s pretty positive Bess hasn’t done any of this either so it’s not so bad. They can figure it out together -- where everything goes and why and how and what feels right and what doesn’t. And Ted has never considered some of the things Bess suggests before but <em>wow</em> is it nice to have her thighs around his face. She has such nice, soft skin and the air in their room is so crisp in the morning that it’s like laying his cheek against the other side of the pillow. <em>Perfect</em>.</p><p>The first week of their collective honeymoon passes slow and lazy like that. They sleep in. They hang out in bed. They explore each other. They even <em>eat</em> in bed sometimes and it’s a novelty because it’s something that Ted was never allowed to do at home and it sort of carried over into living on his own, too.</p><p>Bess is sitting cross-legged in bed with a book open in her lap while Ted stands in front of the huge, fancy mirror in the corner of the room. He’s trying to get the longest pair of socks he’s ever seen up on his leg without letting them go crooked. Elizabeth insists that there’s no shorts to be found anywhere in all of England. Just these tights and the belt they attach to. It’s a little bit strange to think about going outside commando but he’s been washing his shorts by hand and Bess thinks maybe it’s time to give it up. Ted gets distracted doing up the second sock by all the little purple-brown love bites on his side. He looks toward Bess in the reflection and raises his eyebrows and she blushes very hard over the whole thing.</p><p>“Ted, have you ever ridden a horse?”</p><p>“Once, maybe? Pony farm when I was a kid.”</p><p>“Would it be terrible, if you couldn’t get the hang of it, to ride with me?”</p><p>Ted considers it a moment and shakes his head. “Not at all, my most wifely babe-lady. It sounds kind of fun.” Bess grins and Ted’s happy to have made her happy. “You have horses here?”</p><p>“Oh yes, of course. Joanna and I thought it might be nice to have a bit of a ride today. Perhaps all the way to the shore, even. Just to get some fresh air.”</p><p>“That sounds like an excellent idea.”</p><p>Ted might be a little more confident on the horse that the stable boy leads out to him than he lets on. He doesn’t exactly know what he’s doing but the horse is very chilled out and doesn’t feel like it’s going to knock him off or anything. But, he really wants to sit with Bess and doesn’t know how to just say it. It’s nice when he clubs up behind her and wraps his arms around her waist. Bill teases him but he doesn’t care, he’s having too much fun.</p><p>Ted watches Joanna and Bill gallop ahead and he can’t imagine where the heck Bill learned how to ride a horse in San Dimas. He must just be a natural like he is at most things. He looks good, Ted thinks. With his cheeks all pink from the wind and his hair all messed up, like the hero on a paperback romance story. They ride down to the beach and it’s more like the beach around the lake at the state park than it is like the real beach. </p><p>They pace back and forth across the sand until Ted’s butt gets too sore for any more and they decide it's time to have some breakfast. The bread and cheese Joanna takes out of her saddle bag and the bottle of wine that comes out of Bill’s are delicious and in no time at all Ted feels full and near-sleepy again.</p><p>“This is very nice,” Bill starts, his head in Joanna’s lap and his feet in Ted’s. “But I think we should start thinking about how we’re gonna learn how to be good musicians.”</p><p>“Well,” Bess says in a sly tone. “<em>We</em> are, already.” She laughs when the piece of crust Bill tosses at her hits her in the forehead and falls in her lap.</p><p>“I’ve been thinking maybe we could do pretty much the same thing that we did to pass our history report. We could collect a bunch of the best musicians of all time,” as he talks he illustrates his point with the waving of his hands. “And have them teach us how to be the <em>absolute</em> most best.”</p><p>“That’s a most clever idea, my friend. Who would we start with?”</p><p>“Oh! Lindsey Buckingham! I vote for Lindsey Buckingham,” Jo suggests excitedly.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>They spend another week at Bess and Jo’s vacation house before they really need to get moving. Not because they’re running out of time -- they have the booth, of course -- but because the staff tells them that their father is coming.</p><p>No one wants to be around when he gets there. They didn’t part on very good terms by any stretch of the imagination.</p><p>“Boys, we have a proposition,” the ladies say one night over dinner. “We’d like to use the booth to take some things home with us, but it’s very cramped in there, obviously.”</p><p>“We thought we could take a trip back to September fifteenth ourselves and drop everything off and then come right back here.”</p><p>Ted shrugs, “I don’t see any problem with that.”</p><p>“You sure you know how to use the booth?” Bill asks. Jo smacks him on the arm and he laughs. “Yeah, I think that sounds fine.”</p><p>Later that afternoon they help the ladies fit a trunk full of books and carefully packaged old letters and tiny paintings and pretty shawls and princess things of all sorts into the booth. Ted thinks it all looks like the medieval equivalent of what he might have taken from home if he’d needed to just <em>leave </em>and he understands why they’d want to take the chance to have them.</p><p>Ted doesn’t have a chance to be worried about why the ladies don’t come back in the blink of an eye. He and Bill find some swords on the mantle in the library. They haven't been in here often over the last two weeks. It seems like everything is too important to touch in here but they take the swords off the mantle anyway and tumble out the big glass doors into the garden. They swing at each other and laugh, careful not to <em>actually</em> make contact. The sound of the blades clanging together is jarring and they skip across the garden paths like a couple of kids playing pretend.</p><p>“Wait a minute,” Ted says, ducking away from Bill’s swing. “Do you hear that?”</p><p>“I do. Like… like thunder or something?”</p><p>“Yeah, dude!” </p><p>They look up at the sky and it’s clear and blue. There’s not a cloud in sight. They shrug and carry on their sword fight until Bill trips. Ted grabs him, trying to keep him from falling, and only succeeds in putting both of them on the ground.</p><p>“Ow!”</p><p>The shock of hitting the ground wears off fast and they’re rolling across the lawn wrestling like they did when they were kids. When they were kids, obviously, they did not wrestle in such incredible costumes, but it’s still just as exhilarating.</p><p>“Got ya!” Ted pins Bill to the lush grass. He’s just a little sweaty from it all and his hair hangs limp around his face. Bill pushes it away with a big puff of breath and it swings right back. “Whoah!”</p><p>Bill pushes Ted over and he holds on tight, wrapping his legs around Bill’s hips and trying to keep them rolling so he might get the upper hand again. Bill’s elbows against Ted’s shoulders are heavy and he can feel Bill’s breath on his face.</p><p>Ted feels like he hasn’t really seen Bill since they got into the booth at the Battle, like it’s been a whole lifetime between then and now. Like they’ve aged a whole year or something. In some ways, Ted supposes, they have. They’re married men now, to the loves of their lives. They’ve defeated Evil Robot Thems and some guy who was doing the worst Darth Vader impression that Ted has ever seen.</p><p>Ted is pretty sure that he’s decided that he’s gonna tell his dad to take a hike when they get back. They can set up some kind of payment plan if he wants -- or Ted will just go and sell that blood and get it over with and pay off a chunk all at once. If he’s going to be a good husband he’s gotta learn how to stand up for himself and it’s gotta start with the biggest bully he’s ever known.</p><p>All of this runs through Ted’s head at lightning speed to circumvent his increasing awareness that Bill’s got very firm thighs and they’re very obvious in the long socks and slim breeches they’re both wearing. And Bill’s nose is very close to his and Bill’s face is very red and his breath is very hot.</p><p>“Ted, my friend?”</p><p>“Yes, Bill?”</p><p>“This is gonna sound kinda silly, but, I sort of miss you, dude.”</p><p>Ted considers it for a moment. Was that not what he felt too? Why did it feel like such a stark accusation when Bill said it? “I don’t think that’s silly. I think I think the same.”</p><p>One of the many servants comes out to the garden to find them. He stares silently at Ted and Bill there on the ground, unmoving, until they realize that they’ve been caught at something odd. They scramble away from each other and wobble to their feet. </p><p>The thunder is getting louder.</p><p>“Excuse me, my Lords? The King will be arriving shortly and would like to meet with you in his private offices.” Bill and Ted stare at each other, totally agog. “My Lords?”</p><p>“Uh, um -- we’ll be there right away, dude,” Bill sputters</p><p>“Certainly, my Lord.” The servant turns on his heel and disappears back inside.</p><p>“Oh <em>no</em>,” Ted breathes. Something important finally dawns on him. “Where are the babes?”</p><p>Bill has never looked so panicked before. “I don’t know, dude!”</p><p>“Dude, this is <em>bad</em>.”</p><p>“Dude, I <em>know</em>. The last time we saw the King he was trying to cut off our heads!”</p><p>Just then, lightning cracks over head and a <em>woosh</em> of wind pours down on them. The booth falls from the sky and the ladies tumble out of it laughing.</p><p>“Get back in!” Ted screeches. “Now, now, <em>now</em>!”</p><p>“What on Earth has gotten into you, Theodore?” Elizabeth asks, dodging him when he tries to shove her toward the booth.</p><p>“My Ladies! Oh, my Ladies!” The round, happy woman who is in charge of the kitchen comes rushing out into the garden. She’s holding her cap on her head with one hand and cradling a bundle in the other. She shoves the bundle at Bill and gives Jo and Bess each a very fast kiss on the cheek. “My Ladies, you <em>must </em>go now!”</p><p>“What is this all about?” Joanna asks.</p><p>“It’s your dad!” Bill squeaks.</p><p>The princesses hug the kitchen lady tight and yank Bill and Ted into the booth without another word. Ted smashes buttons in a pattern that feels vaguely familiar and wills the universe to just give them this one little miracle. They can hear the shouting of the King’s men as the booth disappears into the Circuits of Time.</p><p>They drop most unceremoniously onto a paved street and open the door to catch their breath. Bill peeks into the bundle he’s clutching in his arms. “Hey, it’s our clothes. Your servants are most thoughtful, Jo.”</p><p>Joanna nods, agreeing. They can duck in some place here and get changed, she suggests. It might look a little less bizarre if they pick up historical musicians in their modern clothes than their medieval ones.</p><p>"Look," Elizabeth says, holding her hand out. "We waited to make sure your apartment was empty." On her hand is the ring Ted had given her. She hugs him tight and kisses him. "We couldn't just leave them."</p><p>“Oh no,” they hear suddenly. “Not again. Absolutely not!”</p><p>“Hey!” Ted says. “Frood-dude!”</p><p>“<em>No</em>, you get back in that contraption and go back to your own time!”</p><p>“Siggy,” Bill asks, “Is that any way to greet a couple of old pals?”</p><p>Freud makes a face like they’ve made him glitch out and they pile back into the booth. They dial more carefully this time, using the number for Los Angeles in 1977. Ted grins and waves at Freud as they dial and Freud promptly faints in the middle of the street.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>For sixteen months, they practice. They learn everything that they possibly can from the rotating group of historical musicians that they bring around to help, taking them back before they’ll be missed.</p><p>Buckingham. Wiggin. Moore. Jones. Lifeson. Davies. Raitt. Harrison. Perry. Mitchell. Zappa. Remler. Stills. Garcia. Jett. Hooker. Tharpe. Prince. James. Lady Bo. Paul. Melvoin. Townsend. Etheridge. Berry. Page. Clapton. Hendrix. Peterson. Wilson. Poison Ivy. Parton. Cotten.</p><p>It’s a whirlwind and they learn something valuable from each and every single one of them. How to <em>play notes</em>. How to pick, how to strum. How to play chords and use a slide.</p><p>How to make <em>music</em>. Real, bonafide music.</p><p>Elizabeth and Joanna leave them to their own devices for the most part. They practice too, picking up drummers and painists and song writers to help them step up their already pretty wicked game.</p><p>No one is brave enough to go get Eddie Van Halen.</p><p>Ted isn’t sure he’d learn anything anyway. There’s too much that goes on in his head at the mere thought of it.</p><p>In the middle of everything, Bill and Ted learn that not only are they husbands now -- they’re also going to be dads. Ted panics. He feels very dumb about it at first. They should have used protection. They just weren’t thinking. He never thinks. His dad is right about him. He’s irresponsible. He’s not ready to be a husband <em>and</em> a dad. They don’t even have a good place to live yet, let alone anything else and --</p><p>And Elizabeth is really happy.</p><p>And she thinks they’ll be fine.</p><p>She thinks Ted should give himself more credit.</p><p>She thinks that it’s going to be a while before the baby is there anyway, so they should focus on the task at hand. They have all the time, well, ever, don’t they? And their Future Selves -- their <em>real </em>Future Selves, not robots -- have been very accommodating. </p><p>They’ve let their Present Selves stay in this totally rad guest house and use all their instruments. The Future Ladies have taken care of the Present Ladies most generously which has really just made the entire thing much less stressful than it could have been. Bill and Ted think their Future Selves are pretty cool, too, even if they are kind of a slight bit of a pair of dickweeds for refusing to tell them <em>literally anything</em> about how life is going to be. But they figure if everyone is together in a big, nice house like this and they have all this amazing equipment, things had to turn out okay. Right? The song that Bill and Ted have been working on will do everything that Rufus said it would.</p><p>One afternoon, Bill and Ted are practicing scales. Future Bill climbs up on a step stool to reach the top shelf of a closet in the practice studio. It was the living room of the guest house at one point but they needed it for other things. Ted wonders sometimes if they did it because they knew that their Past Selves would need it. He climbs back down and hands Ted a package of new strings to replace the ones he’d over-tightened. </p><p>Maybe because he’s an older dude, but the smile he gives Ted when he explains how to change the strings is very soft. Like a blanket fresh from the dryer.</p><p>“So, you’ll want to do the whole set. At least that’s what I’d do.” Future Bill walks him through unwinding the strings two at a time to keep tension on the body of the guitar. </p><p>He unwinds the <em>E</em> first and trades the tool for a pair of clippers from Future Bill. Ted’s stomach does something weird when their hands touch and he pauses. He feels like he wants to just… hold Bill’s hand. Maybe it’s all the time travel they’ve been doing catching up with him. It feels like he’s having a déjà vu and a premonition at the same time. Bill smiles again and pats Ted’s hand like he knows something Ted doesn’t and he points at the guitar.</p><p>“Clip those two loose ones right over the sound hole. Good, right, then you can take the long piece off there and you use the notch on the end of the winder to pry up the post to get the rest off.”</p><p>“Thanks, Future Bill.”</p><p>“No problem, dude. Hey, Ted, we’re gonna order some pizza. We’ll bring a couple over here for you guys?”</p><p>“Sure, dude, thanks! We could all just come over there, though.”</p><p>“No, no. The kids are coming over.” Ted lights up. The kids! That would be totally awesome! He’s sure that Bill and the ladies would be stoked to meet them. Future Bill shakes his head. “We don’t want to mess anything up, dude. You know, change the past or something like that. We’ll tell them you guys said hi, though.”</p><p>“Oh,” Ted feels a little deflated. He gets it though, him and Bill were afraid that they’d change something if they weren’t careful bringing all their various historical figures back and forth, too. Ted walks Future Bill to the door and they can hear Joanna practicing downstairs. “Hey, Future Bill, is that old dude teaching Joanna today really Dave Grohl?”</p><p>“Yeah, dude!”</p><p>“Whoah! That sounds totally different than <em>Bleach</em>.”</p><p>“Dude, like a few days after the Battle? <em>Nirvana’s</em> totally gonna release one of the greatest records of all time.”</p><p>“Whoah!”</p><p>“Yeah!” </p><p>They laugh and they air guitar and Ted’s stomach is all full of very nervous bees. He closes the door behind Future Bill and heads back into the studio to find <em>his</em> Bill there tuning the guitar he’d restrung. “Was that me, dude?” Bill asks.</p><p>“Yeah. Pizza tonight, my friend.”</p><p>“Sweet! Are you ready to work?”</p><p>Ted nods and takes back the guitar when Bill is done. He wants to stick with the acoustic today, Elizabeth isn’t feeling great and he doesn’t want to be too loud while she’s sleeping. “Here,” he says, settling into a chair and flipping his notebook open. “So I was thinking we could base it around <em>A</em>-minor to start? And then go to major.”</p><p>Ted places his fingers in a bar for an <em>F</em> on the eighth fret and starts strumming. He swings his pinky finger up to suspend it and then shifts his hand down to an <em>A</em>-flat. He moves slowly through the cords, getting clumsier and clumsier under Bill’s scrutiny.</p><p>Bill is humming something as he plays and it’s a little off key but Ted isn’t playing very well so he’s not sure there really is even a key for Bill to follow. “Mm-<em>mm</em> gave rock and roll <em>to you</em>…”</p><p>“Words?”</p><p>“Yeah, dude! My most excellent colleague, I have been doing a ton of brainstorming. Keep going!”</p><p>Ted slowly transitions from the little intro he’s playing into the main verse while Bill hums, fragments of lyrics tumbling mumbled from his lips. Bill leans in close like he’s trying to hear the music in Ted’s brain before it makes it down to his fingers. He looks up at Ted and he’s <em>beaming</em>. It’s the look Future Bill was giving him but cranked up to eleven.</p><p>“Wait,” Bill says. “I think your fingers are wrong here.” Bill shifts so their knees fit together and gets closer. He squishes Ted’s fingers down on the strings to push them into the right position for a <em>C</em>-minor. “There,” he breathes. “Now play it.”</p><p>The cord sounds better. Correct.</p><p>Everything sounds better when they work together.</p><p>“Hey, Bill?”</p><p>“Yeah, Ted?”</p><p>He’s not sure what the heck he’s saying. Everything just starts spilling out of his mouth before he can stop it or think any harder about it. “My life would be totally different without you. I don’t know if I’d be here without you.”</p><p>“Well, it does seem like it’s both our house, dude.”</p><p>“No, I mean… What <em>I mean</em> is --” Ted scoots back and sets the guitar aside. “Fuck.”</p><p>“<em>Theodore</em>.”</p><p>Ted rolls his eyes and scrubs his hands over his face. He can still very faintly hear the drumming from downstairs. “What I mean is. My whole life you’ve… you’ve been there. Through everything. You’ve never left. You’ve never let me down. You’ve always made me… better. You’ve made me feel like I was worth something when no one else seemed to think I was. You shared all my dumb, crazy dreams and came <em>everywhere</em> with me through… through time and space itself. Even when we were <em>dead</em> and everything felt so hopeless, you were there and you wouldn’t let me give up.”</p><p>Bill is looking at Ted with a very softly shocked expression.</p><p>“William Stanley Preston, Esquire you are my <em>best</em> friend in the whole universe and I love you.”</p><p>Bill smiles and his cheeks turn pink. “Well, I love you, too, Ted. I always have. I don’t ever want to think about what life would have been like without you.” He grins and jerks his thumb in the general direction of the big house. “And we know we won’t ever have to think about it, dude.”</p><p>Ted shakes his head. “No, Bill. What I’m trying to say is… Oh, <em>man</em>, I don’t even know what I’m trying to say.” Bill’s expression is patient and neutral, his brows just slightly raised. “Bill, I love Elizabeth.”</p><p>Bill nods.</p><p>“I love her with everything I’ve got in me. With my whole heart and soul.”</p><p>Bill nods.</p><p>“I never want to be with anyone else but her. She’s <em>the one</em>, you know?”</p><p>Bill nods.</p><p>“But I love you, <em>too</em>. Like that. With everything. And over the last couple months I’ve really been thinking about it and I think… <em>I know</em>. I know that I love you the same way that I love Bess. Like it’s not… It’s not like there’s two little portraits in a museum in here.” Ted puts his hand on his chest, hoping that Bill understands. “It’s like one picture of the three of us. Together. And I know that on the bottom of the frame where you can’t see the rest of the picture that I’m holding both of your hands and both of you are holding mine.”</p><p>Bill looks upset. His face is very red and he’s breathing kind of hard. He keeps blinking really fast and his eyelashes are all stuck together.</p><p>Ted shifts forward in his seat again, fitting his knees with Bill’s. Ted puts his hands over Bill’s where they’re resting on his thighs. Ted leans in, slowly, and presses his lips very cautiously against Bill’s lips. He hovers like that for a moment before he pulls away. He’s messed up, he knows it. He’s ruined everything. He starts to back away and Bill stops him, holding his hands and keeping him from moving.</p><p>Bill swallows and he blinks one more time and tears slide down over his cheeks.</p><p>“I’m sorry, dude. Just pretend it didn’t happen! I won’t ever mention it again.”</p><p>Bill shakes his head and gulps. He sniffs and hiccups and keeps holding Ted’s hands. Finally he says, “I love you, too, Ted.” He lets out a huge breath, his shoulder sagging with relief. “The same way. I think. I love Joanna and I love you.” He looks up at Ted and he’s got some snot dripping but Ted is afraid to point it out. “I’ve never known how to separate it in my head. It’s the same, it’s <em>always</em> been the same.”</p><p>Ted gently pulls one of his hands away and wipes Bill’s nose with the back of it. Bill laughs and tucks his whole face against his arm and scrubs it.</p><p>Ted can’t help himself. He pulls Bill forward, right out of his chair. Their faces clunk together and their mouths miss and then it’s like magnets kick in and everything fits together right. Ted’s arms tighten around Bill’s body and Bill wraps his arms around Ted’s shoulders and lets himself sit down on Ted’s knee and everything is like an amp that’s shorting out -- sparks are flying everywhere and there’s the faint smell of electrical smoke and Ted’s pretty sure it’s actually his own brain that’s melting.</p><p>"You know," Bill says with his face smooshed against Ted's. "Everything makes sense now."</p><p>"<em>Yeah</em>."</p><p>"Why you insisted on putting that poster of Eddie on the ceiling." Bill kisses him to stop him from saying --</p><p>"Shut up, Bill."</p><p>Bill pulls away to catch his breath. He laughs and kisses Ted again. And again.</p><p>And again.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Pizza feels like a good way to end the day. It’s warm and heavy and comforting. It makes everyone’s lips shiny with oil and impossible to look away from.</p><p>Elizabeth and Joanna are quiet while Bill and Ted talk. They <em>so</em> want the ladies to understand -- and they can’t wait to tell them. It feels like they need to know. Like it would be a heinous betrayal to keep it from them. Jo and Bess are both very thoughtful looking. They share an expression, doing that thing that they do where they tell each other a whole book’s worth of words with a little wiggle of an eyebrow or a twitch of a lip.</p><p>Elizabeth puts her hand over Ted’s on the table and gives him a look that weighs seventeen tons. “I think we’re confused,” she says softly. “Because we didn’t know that you both… that you hadn’t shared that. We thought you <em>knew</em>.”</p><p>Joanna moves her chair closer to Bill’s and turns his face toward hers and gives him a sweet little kiss. “It always seemed like you knew. Sort of unspoken. Understood. You’re like a set of nice dishes at the department store -- not intended for individual sale.”</p><p>Bill snorts and the tension dissipates. The pizza really is good.</p><p>After dinner, the <em>Wyld Stallyns</em>, all of them, sit together in the practice studio and listen to the recording that Bill and Ted managed to muddle their weepy, happy way though that afternoon. Joanna taps her drumsticks against the edge of the table while Bill presses buttons on the very confusing program splashed across the computer screen. Nothing turns bright blue so Ted thinks that they must have done it right this time.</p><p>On the far side of the room, the telephone rings and Ted gets up from the couch, carefully moving Bess’s legs off of his lap. “Hello?” he says into the receiver. Their Future Selves don’t usually call over in the evening, not wanting to disturb any work going on after a full day of practicing and writing.</p><p>“Dad?”</p><p>“Well, I don’t know, dude. Who’s your dad?”</p><p>Elizabeth turns toward him, curious. Joanna’s tapping stops and Bill pauses the program.</p><p>“My dad’s Ted <em>Theodore</em> Logan.”</p><p>“Well, that’s a coincidence. I’m Ted <em>Theodore</em> Logan.” Elizabeth hoists herself off the couch and takes a few tentative steps forward.</p><p>“Billie!” Ted hears in the distance on the other end of the line. “What are you doing? You gotta leave the Other Us’s alone, dude. They’re working on very important stuff, my dearest dude.”</p><p>“Billie?” Ted whispers. Elizabeth’s mouth opens and closes like she lost her voice to a sea witch.</p><p>“Aw, Dad, come on! Everything is <em>fine</em>. The universe is most indubitably saved. I don’t think saying <em>hi</em> will hurt anything.”</p><p>“Billie, you don’t know that.”</p><p>"You can call Kid Cudi and make sure!"</p><p>Ted feels like he’s floating outside of himself.</p><p>“Well, don’t you remember this call?”</p><p>“Yeah! And I also remember you coming to your senses and hanging up.”</p><p>Billie sighs right into the receiver and finally turns her attention back to Ted. “Historical Ted-Dad? I gotta go.”</p><p>“Okay,” Ted gestures at Elizabeth with the phone and she closes her eyes and shakes her head, overwhelmed. She puts her hands on her belly.</p><p>Billie doesn’t hang up. Her voice drops to a whisper and she says, “Ted? Dad? Bring everybody to the front door, okay? Thea and I want to say hi -- just <em>real fast</em>. Okay?”</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>The phone clicks and goes silent and Ted puts it back into the charging cradle. He tells them what Billie said and they all scramble to the door, swinging it wide open and squeezing into the frame. Across the big, wide yard, there’s two people standing silhouetted in the light on the back patio. They jump and wave and throw their arms into the most triumphant air guitar Ted thinks he’s ever witnessed.</p><p>Billie and Thea cheer when Bill and Ted and Jo and Bess spill out of the doorway and air guitar right back at them.</p><p>“Have fun writing your song Historical Parents! It's gonna be most prodigious!” The voice is different than the one on the phone -- Thea, Ted thinks.</p><p>Their Future Kids scramble back inside when Future Joanna and Future Elizabeth appear in the doorway behind them, laughing like they’ve gotten away with eating a dozen cookies before dinner.</p><p>They head back inside and close the door. They stand there in the little vestibule between the coat closet and the umbrella stand, not sure what to say to each other. The ladies hold onto them, hugging them tight. Bess’s hands grip the back of Ted’s shirt like she needs something to keep her on the ground. Ted kisses the top of her head and glances at Bill, swaying slightly with Jo in his arms.</p><p>Bill leans toward them and puts his forehead against Ted’s. “Dude, when we go back?”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“We should totally have beards.”</p><p>“Whoah, excellent idea, my friend.”</p><p>Elizabeth snorts somewhere under Ted’s chin. “I guess we have to finish that song. They’re all waiting on us.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
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